Orange completes acquisition of Airtel in Africa

Bharti Airtel, a telecom giant declared that ‘Orange’, originally a French telecom company has completed acquisition of Airtel’s subsidiaries in Burkina Faso via its subsidiary Orange Côte d’Ivoire. Earlier Orange was in talks to acquire both Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone acquisition is still in process.

Orange Côte d’Ivoire has acquired 100 per cent of the operations in Burkina Faso. Airtel ranks second in Burkina Faso and has nearly 4.6 million subscribers. Burkina Faso becomes the 20^th country in Africa and Middle East to join the Orange group.

Airtel is known for its extensive 3.75G network providing internet services across 100 towns. Orange is looking forward to providing better digital ecosystem through innovation and development as the Burkina Faso customers have strong expectations from the acquisition.

Earlier in January 2016 Orange had signed deal with Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV for acquiring two African operations in Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone. The size of the deal was not revealed but was expected to touch 800-900 million USD.

In last two years Airtel has sold 8300 telecom towers in Africa worth 1.7 billion USD. For debt reduction Airtel is divesting 15,000 towers to different companies in 13 countries in the region.

Bharti Airtel on Thursday is trading at Rs 363.60 with marginal gains of 0.2 per cent.