MTN Cameroon and state-owned Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel) have penned a national roaming agreement which will see the latter expand its coverage significantly.

South African operator MTN has announced an expansion drive into rural and peri-urban areas and a major 5G rollout, at a cost of some R749 million (about US$51.5 million dollars), in the Western Cape province this year.

Telecel Group has finally completed its acquisition of Mattel Mauritania from Tunisie Telecom and Comatel for an undisclosed fee.

Google’s Equiano subsea cable system will connect Nigeria this month (April) a move that is expected to boost broadband speeds for the country and its neighbours fivefold.

Fresh from its commercial launch in Angola’s capital of Luanda, Africell has revealed the next locations for its phased network rollout of 4G services.

Two of the world’s biggest names in digital payments have announced major agreements in significant African markets: Visa in Egypt with operator Orange Egypt and Mastercard in Kenya with digital payment solution provider PesaLink.

Remittances are back in the headlines with news of a recently announced partnership that is targeting Zimbabweans who want to transfer funds from the UK to South Africa and Zimbabwe.

MTN’s Nigeria business – which constitutes its largest market in Africa – has been very much in the news in recent days, mainly thanks to the approval by the Central Bank of Nigeria of a licence for MTN's Mobile Money (MoMo) Payment Service Bank in the country.

Operator Telma Madagascar and vendor Ericsson say they have deployed Ericsson’s Radio 6626 three-sector dual-band radio across five major sites in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo.

Mauritania’s small population and low economic output has limited the country’s ability to develop sustained growth in the telecom sector.

In recent years the government of Ivory Coast has helped develop a competitive telecom sector focussed on the provision of converged services, thus allowing operators to offer fixed-line and mobile services under a universal services licence regime.

It looks like one of the potential hurdles to the planned licensing of high-demand spectrum in South Africa may have been overcome after the country’s number three operator Telkom ended its legal battle with regulator the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA).

Among African countries, Burundi provides an attractive telecom market given its high population density and existing low penetration rates for all services.

Rwanda was slow to liberalise the mobile sector, allowing MTN a monopoly until 2006 when the fixed-line incumbent, Rwandatel (since acquired by Liquid Intelligence Technologies) became the second mobile operator.

With few resources, Malawi is one of the world’s least developed countries. There has been little investment in fixed-line telecom infrastructure, and as a result, the country’s two mobile networks Airtel Malawi and TMN provide the vast majority of connections for voice and data services.

Tanzania’s telecom sector enjoys effective competition, particularly in the mobile segment. There remains considerable movement within the market, with Smart having stopped services in late 2019 and Tigo Tanzania having completed its merger with Zantel. Tigo Tanzania in April 2021 was sold by its parent company MIC as it sought to focus on its operations in Latin America.

Eswatini (or eSwatini) was one of the last countries in the world to open up its telecom market to competition. Until 2011 the state-owned Eswatini Posts and Telecommunications also acted as the industry regulator and had a stake in the country’s sole mobile network, in an uneasy partnership with MTN Eswatini.

The telecom sector in Mauritius has long been supported by the varied needs of tourists. This has stimulated the mobile market, leading to a particularly high penetration rate.

Not too surprisingly perhaps, the Nigerian federal government’s call to operators to bar outgoing calls by subscribers that have yet to link their SIMs with their National Identity Numbers (NIN) has reportedly led to huge crowds at enrolment centres.

Telecel Group is acquiring 100% of shares in Mauritanian operator Mattel (Mauritano-Tunisienne des Télécommunications) from BSA Telecommunication and Tunisie Telecom (TT), BSA telecommunication and COMATEL.

Africell has launched commercial mobile services in Angola after months of delays, with ambitions to shake up the telecoms sector with more significant investments.  

Nigeria’s government has ordered the country’s mobile operators to block SIM cards from making outgoing calls if they have not been registered to their user’s National Identity Number (NIN).

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where opposition to the recent Registre des appareils mobiles (RAM) – a tax on mobile devices – caused it to be withdrawn, it looks like the regulator, the Autorité de Régulation de la Poste et des Télécommunications du Congo (ARPTC), is trying a different money-raising approach, this time through a tax targeting consumption.

After months of delay, Africell has finally set a date for its Angola debut next month to become the fourth operator in the country.

Infobip has acquired a Service without Network (National) licence to operate in Zambia, which will help the firm expand in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN) has confirmed that it will not issue new telecoms and broadcasting licences between 1^st October 2022 and 30^th September 2023.

With the deadline of 31^st March now elapsed, Nigeria’s government has called on the country’s mobile phone users to register their National Identity Numbers (NINs) to their SIM cards in “the next few days.”

Zambia’s regulator has claimed to have blocked over two million illegal SIM cards, a move that is part of plans to clamp down on illegal activities prevailing as citizens take up digital financial services.

Togo is aiming to fiberise the country’s network of electrical power lines, according to the Minister of the Digital Economy and Digital Transformation Cina Lawson.

Zain South Sudan has selected Tecnotree’s BSS suite for a major digital transformation initiative.

EASSy, the 10,000-kilometre submarine cable system traversing Africa’s east and south coasts, is leveraging Ciena's GeoMesh Extreme to increase capacity and performance in sub-Saharan Africa.

Liquid Intelligent Technologies has acquired a fibre pair on the Equiano subsea cable, allowing the firm to transport traffic up to 12 Terabits.

Could mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) finally be coming to Nigeria? It seems likely given the recent publication by the country’s telecommunications regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), of what it calls a License Framework For the Establishment Of Mobile Virtual Network Operators in Nigeria.