Orange reaffirmed ambitions to grow its presence across Africa and the Middle East via acquisition, as the company established a separate holding company for its operations in the regions, effective from this month.

The move, which has been mooted for over year, will see Orange launch a holding company for all its assets in both regions under a single legal framework. Orange operates in 19 countries across Africa and the Middle East and said it has ambitions to grow revenue by approximately five per cent per year through to 2018. It also aims to increase operating profit faster than sales growth.

The separate entity could potentially be used to attract new investors and strategic partners to team up with Orange. Most recently, the company said it was looking for investors in Egypt, while planning to increase its stake in Morocco’s Meditel.

Orange revealed its Africa and Middle East unit is presently the group’s most profitable, with a 33 per cent average increase in revenue, compared to 31 per cent in other regions.

It added that its strategy for Europe is based around convergence, which was reaffirmed by its proposed acquisition of Spain’s Jazztel. Orange also confirmed it was not looking to expand anywhere else, apart from its three core markets of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

Bharti Airtel announced the sale of tower assets in five African countries for US$1.3 billion, which the company said will be used to reduce debt.

The company also confirmed it is in the process of further divestment in six other countries, as part of its previously announced intentions to divest tower assets in 13 African countries.

In a statement to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Airtel said: “We have completed the sale transactions in five countries, while in two, the agreements have lapsed. For the balance six countries, the process is on and we hope to have finality in the coming few months on the transactions processed.”

Airtel initially owned 15,000 mobile towers across the continent, where it operates in 17 countries, but began to offload the infrastructure, as part of a growing trend amongst African operators to sell masts to specialist companies and lease them back to cut costs.

In November, Airtel agreed to sell its phone towers in Tanzania and Malawi to Helios Towers and Eaton Towers. It also offloaded 4,800 masts in Nigeria to American Tower in the same month.

Most recently, Airtel sold 1,100 towers in Zambia and Rwanda.

The government of South Africa confirmed the sale of its 14 per cent stake in Vodacom, which is worth more than US$2 billion, to the Public Investment Corporation (PIC).

The government has been considering selling the stake since at least last year, as part of its plans to raise funding for struggling state power utility Eskom Holdings.

The proceeds from the sale will be used to finance a ZAR23 billion (US$1.9 billion) allocation to Eskom, although the country’s treasury did not confirm how much the Vodacom stake was worth.

Bloomberg has previously speculated that the government’s Vodacom stake is worth approximately US$2.3 billion.

The government also committed to converting a ZAR60 billion subordinated loan granted to Eskom into equity. Eskom is struggling to maintain energy in some of South Africa, and regulators reportedly rejected the company’s request to hike up prices last week.

In a separate development, Vodacom secured approval from South Africa’s antitrust regulator to acquire Tata-owned ISP Neotel for ZAR7 billion.

South Africa’s competition commission approved the deal, which was first announced last May, under the condition that Vodacom does not cut any jobs and commits to a ZAR10 billion investment in the company within five years. Under the terms, Vodacom will also not have access to Neotel spectrum for at least two years.

The acquisition has already been approved by South Africa’s communications regulator ICASA, and will now face a competition tribunal. Rivals, including MTN and Cell C, have expressed reservations over the deal in the past over fears that Vodacom will become too dominant in the market.

MTN Group has partnered with ZTE to launch an Internet of Things platform, providing a dedicated network to connect devices and systems, as well as a global M2M SIM card in Africa.

The platform, already live in South Africa, claims to adopt “cutting-edge technologies suited to developing markets, bringing flexible connectivity for devices in the region”, while the SIM card provides customers with a blanket rate for M2M activity across MTN’s African network.

The operator believes IoT and M2M technology will drive business growth in the Middle East and Africa in sectors such as banking, transportation, and energy through smart cities and says it has “developed a clear strategy to contribute to this growth”.

MTN also believes the platform and its associated integrated network environment will enable it to introduce application services with the potential to enhance the socio-economic environment in the rest region.

MTN is working with a number of organisations to support the development of smart cities.

Ooredoo Oman has announced the appointment of Amaal Al Lawati as chief customer experience officer (CXO). Leading the company’s customer engagement strategy, Al Lawati’s role will focus on continuing the growth of Ooredoo’s call centre service, in addition to allocating the right skillsets to drive the evolution of its customer experience.

Part of the Ooredoo family for over a decade, Al Lawati’s previous experience includes managing over 300 staff and now as CXO, she will lead staff from a range of departments.