Africa: fastest growing mobile market in the world; There is good news from the mobile telephone front in Africa. Celtel International, the continent's dominant provider, is making huge inroads and is now the leader in 10 of the 13 countries in which it operates. Stuart Price reports.

Africa's leading mobile telecoms provider, Celtel International, has increased its number of customers to over four million, according to figures released by the company for the first half of this year. The company, which currently operates in 13 African countries, has also announced significant growth in the six months up to the end of June as a result of the acquisition of KenCell, a Kenyan mobile network operator.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Marten Pieters, Celtel's CEO, was euphoric: "We have continued to achieve strong organic growth with a 63% increase in the number of users in the existing businesses," he said. "During the half year, we made a strategic investment of $118m in infrastructure to grow our networks and aggressively promoted our new brand."

The acquisition of KenCell now sees Celtel as the only provider supplying coverage across all of East Africa, incorporating Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. "The KenCell acquisition in May was a critical strategic development which gave us a quantum leap in user numbers to four million," Pieters revealed. "This key licence consolidates our position in the East African region and we have already identified network expansion and development opportunities for these markets."

The transaction took place at the end of May and involved the investment of $250m to attain 60% of the equity in KenCell, in addition to taking over all shareholder loans and developing the business. In tandem with the company's steady growth has come the creation of a further 891 jobs in the communications industry, taking Celtel's staff figure to 3,341, from 2,450 at the end of last December.

The 111% increase in the number of Celtel's total managed customers is attributed to Africa continuing to be the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, according to the latest African Telecommunication Indicators for 2003. In the five years from 1998 to 2003, mobile phone subscriber numbers have proliferated on the continent by over 1,000%. Yet despite the increase, the 6.2% cellular penetration level in Africa remains far behind the global average of 22%. Celtel recognises Africa to be a fragmented yet challenging market and the company's focus over the next six-month period will be to strengthen and increase its market share. It will also "continue to actively pursue new licence opportunities, participating in bids or by acquiring existing operators as demonstrated by the recent acquisition in Kenya".

Apart from East Africa, Celtel also operates in Burkina Faso, Chad, DRCongo, Gabon, Malawi, Niger, Congo-Brazzaville, Sierra Leone and Zambia. It also provides the major fixed telephone line operations in Tanzania, as well as being a major shareholder in Sudan's leading mobile operator, Mobitel. As a result, Celtel is now the leading mobile brand in 10 of the 13 countries in which it operates. The company is now well placed to develop and expand rapidly as mobile penetration continues to grow across the continent.