It is expected that Bharti Airtel shall unveil a new brand for its 15 Zain Africa assets by the end of October. If the process to introduce and market a new corporate and brand identity was not enough of a challenge in itself, Bharti Airtel is also faced with the added complexity of dismantling the Zain brand without losing any of the African optimism and dynamism it represented

Manoj Kohli and his management team face a number of challenges in growing the business in Africa, and would do well to listen and learn before leaping to any new strategic directions (Getty Images)

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In the five years that Peter Kaliaropoulos has been CEO of Batelco, he has transformed the incumbent telco from a single country operator with fewer than 400,000 mobile subscribers to a seven-country operation with 7.3 million users. The telco’s ambitions don’t end there: with a strategic aim to operate in 12-15 different territories counting 15-20 million subscribers within five years; Kaliaropoulos is growing the company in a fashion never experienced by a Gulf operator before

Peter Kaliaropoulos has been CEO of Batelco since March 2005. A native of Australia, he has around 25 years experience in the telecom sector, most of it spent in the Asia Pacific region

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Phuthuma Nhleko, MTN Group’s president and CEO since 2002 is set to stand down as of March 31, 2011. He has been instrumental in driving the South Africa mobile operator to the apex of the industry on the continent, leaving whoever is selected to succeed him with a colossal legacy to continue

The replacement of outgoing MTN Group CEO, Phuthuma Nhleko is set to be confirmed in the coming month or two. Nhleko’s tenure ends March 2011

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Motorola’s networks business had been preparing to forge a path as an independent entity prior to the announcement by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in the middle of July that the latter was to acquire the majority of Motorola’s wireless networks infrastructure assets. In one of his last interviews prior to the announcement, Ali Amer, Motorola Networks’ vice president and general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa told Comm. why the business remained in a strong position

Ali Amer, Motorola Networks’ vice president and general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa

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Currently, there are over 500 million users of wireless broadband technology worldwide and usage is growing at a phenomenal rate. In this region we know that consumers in general are very early adopters of any type of technology and so we see very good broadband growth potential. When you look at any of the operators in any of the key markets in the Gulf, they are amongst the first in the world to trial LTE. So we really see LTE as being very strong in the region.

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