Africa: Zambia Looks to Become a Potential Communications Hub - President Says It Is Not a Landlocked Country but a Land-Linked State

30 September 2022

London — Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema is seeking to turn the disadvantages of being landlocked into advantages. He says the country should see itself as strategically located and turn itself into a hub of production, value addition, and food distribution. If it plays its cards right, communications could be one of those 'value adds' as it has some of the same hub potential. Russell Southwood looks at what's currently happening in the market.

Because of its unusual geographic shape, Zambia borders on an unusually large number of countries: Mozambique, Tanzania, DRC, Angola, Botswana and Zimbabwe. In order to take advantage of this geographic positioning it needs to bring together a density of different fibre routes and data centres to allow meet points, local and regional hosting and caching.

In August 2022 pan-African fibre operator Paratus Zambia launched its data centre which is highly rated by those who have seen it. NetOne has a smaller but quite effective carrier-neutral data centre and there is Infratel which operates three data centres and offers Microsoft Azure. It has done well with public sector clients. Potential for these public services is reinforced by local data sovereignty laws that specify this data has to stay in the country. But as one local industry source told us: "There's been a fair amount of talk about cloud but there is not much here.'

The Zambian Government is actively promoting the digitilization of public services, of which there are now a number including the Zambian Revenue Authority and customs.

The largest of the country fibre operators is Liquid that has a very strong fibre infrastructure and good cross-border links. It has been selling some Office365 to its customers and a cloud-based VoIP service. Paratus is building up its network assets with both wireless and fibre and plans to go to the Copperbelt with fibre. SmartNet Networks has 1300km in Lusaka with an additional 800kms of network presence in the Copperbelt province towns from Chililabombwe to Ndola, plus an additional 400km of nodes in the new mining frontier town of Solwezi, in Kasama in the North, in Chipata to the East near the Malawi border, in Mongu to the west in the southern towns of Mazabuka and Choma and finally in Livingstone that borders Zimbabwe.

Smaller operators without much of their own infrastructure include: Echo (which acquired iWay); iSat Zambia (part of the Wananchi Group) and Inq (which acquired Africonnect). The latter is looking a edge-based digital services like security video with AI to alert you when someone is in the enclosure.

Zamtel, which was privatized to LapGreen and then renationalized has been in a holding pattern for a number of years. It both loses money and has very little new capital to invest. Therefore it has few fibre assets and is still largely delivering internet using ADSL. In June 2022 Zamtel Acting CEO Joshua Malupenga told a staff meeting that the Government had found an international strategic partner. But the identity of the mystery investor has yet to be made public.

The expanding amount of fibre networks and the increasing volume of fibre being used by customers means that international wholesale prices have fallen by about 15-20% since March 2020. Routes are also getting more reliable. One factor feeding into these lower prices has been the strengthening of the local currency the Kwacha. Under the previous President it was 22-23 Kwacha to the US dollar but it is now 16 Kwachas to the US dollar. Also inflation has fallen from 24% to 10%.

Local capacity pricing has also fallen but not as dramatically but again due to the increased volume of capacity there has been a 7-8% drop in prices per year.

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In Brief

People: The International Telecommunication Union's (ITU's) member states have elected Doreen Bogdan-Martin as its new Secretary-General, its first women leader... Vodacom Tanzania has reported that it has appointed Phillip Besiimire as the telco's managing director, effective from October 15. Besiimire joins Vodacom from MTN South Africa, where he served in various titles, the most recent being the chief of sales, distribution and regional operations since 2019. He will replace Hilda Bujiku, who was acting after the departure of the previous Managing director Sitholizwe Mdlalose. Before his appointment to the Tanzanian telco, Besiimire had held various senior roles at MTN, including stints as regional executive operations in South Africa, CEO of South Sudan and chief marketing officer in Zambia. At MTN, Besiimire also served as chief marketing and acting CEO in Eswatini (Swaziland)..

Angola: A new ISP named NET-G is launching this week in Angola, backed by the local Galec group in partnership with Netherlands-based multinational Sun Evo Holding, Lusa reports. The partners reportedly intend to invest USD106 million in the ISP project, involving an initial launch in parts of Luanda - expected to cover 50% of the main urban areas of the capital in a first phase - ahead of expansion to cover the entirety of the city in the short-term, before progressing in the medium-term to cover the provinces of Cabinda, Benguela, Huambo, Huila, Malanje, Kwanza Sul, Uije, Namibe, Lunda Norte and Bengo, according to the report.

Nigeria: MTN Nigeria and Ericsson have inked a deal to leverage Ericsson's 5G Radio Access Network & NSA Packet Core to launch the first phase of 5G service, which will cover certain parts of Lagos and Nigeria, and will provide consumers and enterprises with innovative 5G applications

To improve access to quality broadband internet and data hosting services for homes and businesses in Africa, IFC has announced it is expanding its relationship with WIOCC Group with a $30 million equity investment. The new investment will support WIOCC Group's continued rollout of terrestrial fiber-optic networks, investment in new subsea cables, and the launch of world-class, open-access core and edge data center infrastructure across the continent.

South Africa: Mukuru (https://www.Mukuru.com), a financial services platform in Southern Africa, and WeThinkCode, an academy that delivers a coding curriculum for youth while addressing the industry skills shortage, hosted a women-only hackathon at the end of Women's Month aimed at providing an opportunity for young women to showcase their talent, further their studies and boost their careers in the IT sector. The hackathon was attended by WeThinkCode female students and Mukuru Education Fund female bursary recipients. Teams were tasked with developing a financial education or management tool - to provide Mukuru's customer base with better financial management and education tools. A massive success, organisers were wowed by the energy, enthusiasm and talent on display, signaling a strong future for women in tech in Africa.

Cote d'Ivoire: Telecoms operators in Cote d'Ivoire have met with representatives of the government and the Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications in Cote d'Ivoire (Autorite de Regulation des Telecommunications de Cote d'Ivoire, ARTCI) to discuss quality of service (QoS) issues. A report from Ecofin says the meeting was organised by the country's Minister of Digital Economy and Telecoms, Amadou Coulibaly, amid concerns that poor QoS levels are hindering efforts towards digital transformation. The parties have decided to reactivate a working group to discuss QoS improvements, while the ARTCI will be given additional powers to take steps to enhance service levels. Discussions will also centre on how to deal with disruption from outside factors such as extreme weather, climactic changes, road works, building projects and energy outages.

South Africa-based MTN Group is reportedly looking to harness the potential of rising demand for broadband services across the African continent, and to that end is aiming to build out 135,000km of fibre-optic cabling by 2025 and generate revenues of up to USD1 billion for its network-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service. Working with its wholesale and infrastructure services arm MTN GlobalConnect, MTN is hoping to become Africa's leading player in the fibre market.

Mozambique: The Raxio Group, a pan-African data centre developer and operator, held a ground-breaking ceremony that formally kicks off the construction of its premier Tier-III carrier neutral colocation data centre, located at Beluluane Industrial Park (MozParks) in Maputo, Mozambique ("Raxio MZ1")

Vodacom has announced that they are going to be sourcing its electricity from renewable independent power producers.

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