Who will fund the telcos?

This week on African infosec

Author

CybAfrique Media
January 24, 2026

CybAfriqué is a space for news and analysis on cyber, data, and information security on the African continent.

HIGHLIGHTS

Who will fund the telcos? 

In 1998, Sudanese-British businessman Mo Ibrahim began building MSI-Cellular, later known as Celtel, from nearly a billion dollars he made from the 1998 acquisition of his consultancy, Mobile Systems International (MSI). In 2005, he sold Celtel to MTC (later Zain) for $3.4 billion in a deal that is still regarded as one of the most important bets of African business.

In a 2012 Harvard Business Review article, Ibrahim reflected on the sale with some regret. Firstly, a telecom is a tricky thing to build: Celtel had become too big to be small, and so it was seeking expansion funds to the tune of a billion dollars, notably to upgrade its infrastructure from 2G to 2.5G/3G. Secondly, Ibrahim had raised a lot of equity funding from investors who were then looking for an exit. He was opting for an IPO in London and Johannesburg when he received an unsolicited offer, including Zain’s $3.4 billion exit. Zain also acquired V-Mobile for $1 billion in Nigeria.

By 2010, Zain had over 40 million customers across 15 African countries. Yet it was still struggling to upgrade to 3G infrastructure. Competitors like MTN moved faster, having reached profitability due to the avoidance of forex traps and an asset-light approach to growth. Zain was sold to India’s Bharti Airtel in 2010. Airtel outsourced non-financial support from international firms like IBM and Ericsson for its 3G rollout, and then five years later, it had to start upgrading to 4G. It took a $750 million loan from a consortium of banks and a 2019 dual-listing IPO to pay off debts and complete its 4G rollout, which was still ongoing by 2022. By 2019, conversations about 5G rollout had already begun in developed countries. To fund its 5G upgrade, Airtel is finalising the sale of its tower assets and minority stakes in its mobile money business. It probably also has to worry about its very limited fiber internet footprint and non-existent satellite internet.

At this point, you get the gist. Telcos are like, really, really expensive to run. Every half-decade, you also have to vomit billions of dollars in licensing and infrastructure upgrade costs. It’s no longer as hard as it used to be. Sino loans, often given based on patronage to Chinese tech giants ZTE and Huawei, have done more for African connectivity than you think. Which, if you’ll learn anything from our past editions and this Celtel/Zain/Airtel story, is worrying and a concern for digital sovereignty.

In 2024 and early 2025, we’ve seen the bill for this come due in different ways. The "Sino-loan" model has created a monoculture of hardware that makes exploitations like the Salt Typhoon easier. We are also seeing a 14% spike in spyware targeting African businesses because the last mile of connectivity is paved with legacy systems that are too expensive to patch and too critical to turn off. Telecom Namibia was quietly crippled by ransomware in 2024, and Kenya's National Incident Response Team recorded 842 million intrusions in Q3 2025 alone.

China has been the largest financier of African internet access, except for now and then, when it is not. Like in Tunisia, where Tunisia Telecom acquired a €190 million ($221 million) EIB (European Investment Bank) loan alongside an €11 million EU grant, dedicated to upgrading to 5G and expanding its fibre-optic network, especially as it struggles against competition from much better-equipped Ooredoo and Orange. The risk of foreign capital in telcos remains the same, but who will fund African connectivity if the Africans do not?

FEATURES

HEADLINE

ACROSS THE WORLD

OPPORTUNITIES

If you haven’t already, check out our three-part series on African infosec most important issues of 2025 here, here, and here. See you next week.

Reply

or to participate.