Two new offices in East Africa help telecommunications infrastructure provider provide better service its customers and its growing co-location business
The new offices - in Kampala, Uganda, and in Nairobi, Kenya, will be fully staffed and fully operational by the end of the year. The expansion is primarily driven by new business opportunities and the desire to be closer to its customers, says Issam Darwish, CEO of IHS.
“By collaborating with the operators, we will leverage our experience in other parts of Africa while creating new jobs, improving infrastructure, increasing availability and accelerating new technology development.”
IHS delivers best-in-class solutions to the mobile operators by providing a combination of colocation, build-to-suit, deployment and active and passive managed services. It has enjoyed growth of more than 70 per cent over the last five years. Major customers in the region include MTN, Airtel, Etisalat and other MNOs. The expansion adds to the company's existing presence in Nigeria, Ghana, South Sudan and Sudan.
With new investors such as Investec, IFC and FMO, in addition to and strong backing from Stanbic, IHS is investing in existing and new infrastructure to increase the efficiency and availability of telecoms services for the people of Uganda and, working with all of the telecoms operators, to help accelerate rural coverage and technology roll-out. The IHS model facilitates sharing of passive infrastructure amongst the operators, improves the utilisation of resources and helps reduce operating costs.
