UAE’s Etisalat Keen on Entering Ethiopian Telecom Market

ADDIS ABABA – Etisalat Group, Abu Dhabi headquartered telecom company, keen on entering the Ethiopian market.

CEO of the Group Hatem Dowidar held talks virtually with Ethiopia’s State Minister of Finance Dr. Eyob Tekalign on Tuesday.

During the discussions, “Etisalat has expressed its interest to enter the Ethiopian telecom market,” the ministry of Finance said.

The UAE firm has shared its readiness to work with the Government of Ethiopia and market actors to actualize investment opportunities, per MoF.

The meeting ended with an agreement for both parties to continue their conversations in Addis Ababa in the coming weeks.

Etisalat provides telecom services to 155.4 million subscribers in 16 countries across the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Etisalat is the third major telecom company to have expressed interest to work in Ethiopia this month. The other two telecom firms are France’s Orange and Netherlands’ Veon.

The government has already initiated a tendering process to sell a 45% stake in the state-owned Ethio Telecom and issue a third telecoms license.

The process was launched two years after the government granted the first telecoms license to a private operator to break the monopoly of Ethio Telecom in that sector.

The operator, a consortium led by Kenya’s Safaricom, paid $850 million for the license.