Following on from the 1st in a 4 part series, Telecoms expert Lars Stork discusses the changing landscape of the telecoms sector in Africa.

The telecoms industry in Africa has evolved very fast experiencing two to three digit growth rates. Operators has invested significantly in network roll out for the most part funded by foreign currency debt. The need for change reflecting upon an increasing competitive environment, more sophisticated services, pressures on reducing operating costs while improving customer services now also must address the need for drastic business transformation that reflect the current economical crisis.
One of the fastest growing markets in Africa, Nigeria, provides an excellent example of the need to rethink and transform. Operators have in recent years collectively invested in excess of seven billion US dollars in building out their networks across the country. The Nigerian competitive environment is getting increasingly fiercer, Etisalat being the latest entrant in addition to CDMA operators like Visafone, Multilink’s and Starcoms grabbing an ever increasing share of the market.
The financial crisis and the falling oil price, provides even more pressure on the Nigerian economy, since December 2008 the local currency has devalued against the US $ of about 30%, leaving scarred shareholders to accept a significant adjustment to their earnings expectation from what is the fastest growing but also one of most the most complex markets on the continent. Leadership teams traditional role is not conducive to meeting the current challenges, time is now up, the continued talk of transforming the way operators and vendors alike do business in Africa, is now simply is not enough, drastic actions for survival and positive progression is now required.

By Lars Stork

http://www.futureafrica.eu

Related posts:

1. Turning Challenges into Opportunities (Part 4) Operators are all seeking to survive and become low cost...
2. Turning Challenges into Opportunities (Part 3) The continued discussion on infrastructure sharing will certainly now be...
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Tags: crisis management, foreign aid, global financial crisis, telecoms operators

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 4:03 am and is filed under Industry Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.