Bharti Airtel announced its tower deal with IHS Holding to sell over 1100 telecoms towers in Zambia and Rwanda.
IHS said this is the first buy and lease back transaction with Airtel.
IHS Towers has operations in Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Zambia and Rwanda. Following the transaction, IHS will manage over 21,000 towers across 5 countries in Africa.
As part of the tower deal, Airtel will sell and lease back over 1100 towers from IHS in Zambia and Rwanda under a 10-year renewable contract.
“This agreement will accelerate infrastructure sharing amongst operators and benefit customers in form of affordable tariffs and wider network coverage,” said Christian de Faria, MD & CEO – Africa, Bharti Airtel.
Airtel says the tower deal will help drive cost efficiencies via the use of shared passive infrastructure and debt reduction.
IHS customers, the mobile network operators, will benefit from lower operating costs, expanded network coverage and accelerated network roll out times, higher network capacity and improved quality of service.
Issam Darwish, executive vice chairman and group CEO of IHS, said: “The opportunity to expand our East African business bringing IHS’ market leading energy and infrastructure management practices to a wider market is an excellent opportunity.”
