Mo Ibrahim
Mo Ibrahim took an early punt on the transformational potential of mobile phones in Africa and came out two billion dollars richer. his rise to prominence, first as an entrepreneur and then as a philanthropist, has made him one of the continent’s most sought-after voices.
Born in Sudan in 1946, Ibrahim grew up in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. he came to the UK on a scholarship and was later hired by British Telecom (BT). There, he was part of the team that pioneered Britain’s first cellular phone network.
He cuts a somewhat unlikely figure as a tycoon. He smokes a pipe, wears tweed jackets, has a mischievous chuckle and no obvious pretensions of grandeur.
Ibrahim’s best-known company was Celtel (now Zain), which he sold to Kuwait’s MTC in 2005 for $3.4bn. But Celtel owed its existence to the it consultancy that he set up in 1989 with just $50,000.
The company grew to provide design solutions to mobile phone networks around the world, before Ibrahim sold it to Marconi in 2000 for $900m. These funds helped finance his ambitions in Africa at a time when international telecoms companies saw African markets as too risky. For Ibrahim, however, investing in a market with so much pent-up demand was a “no-brainer”. Read the rest of this entry »
Zain Group has awarded Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) a five-year outsourcing contract to manage and upgrade its mobile networks in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Kenyans will be able to send and receive money to UK through Safaricom’s M-PESA in the company’s first commercial cross-border transfer service.
The Nigerian government has decided that the country’s GSM network operators will not be allowed to buy the mobile assets of state-owned NITEL when it is eventually privatized. Although the government was originally looking to sell the company as a single entity, the government has now agreed to split the company into its component divisions and sell them separately.
MTN’s Ugandan subsidiary has raised $100 million in debt to fund the expansion of its network. Isaac Nsereko, Chief Marketing Officer at MTN confirmed the development to the Reuters news agency. 
Nigeria’s two largest mobile network operators, MTN and Zain, have agreed to sign up to a centralized lost/stolen handset database after a funding agreement was brokered by the telecommunications regulator. The Central Equipment Identity Registry (CEIR) service provider, Netvisa, will operate the database independently of the operators.
Ghana has been a pioneer in African telecommunications. Ghana launched the first cellular mobile network in sub-Saharan Africa in 1992. Ghana was among the first countries in Africa to be connected to the Internet and to introduce ADSL broadband services, and it has been involved in leading the way in market liberalization and deregulation, with its privatization of Ghana Telecom (GT) in 1996. 
Zambia’s government has announced plans to sell three-quarters of its stake in the state-owned Zambia Telecommunications Corporation (Zamtel) to a private investor and eventually float the remaining 25% on the Lusaka Stock Exchange. President Rupiah Banda of Zambia said the partial privatization of Zamtel was the only way to resolve the financial problems the company is facing.
