The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has approved Airtel Kenya’s application to replace its temporary licence with a new 10-year permit for 2×10MHz of spectrum in the 2100MHz band.

The Competition and Consumer Authority of Botswana has announced its unconditional approval for the acquisition of 100% of Broadband Botswana Internet (BBi) by the Botswanan arm of South Africa’s Paratus Telecommunications Ltd.

Completing a very busy few days for Intelsat, the satellite operator has added deals in Brazil and Mali to the recently reported Ku-band-related agreement in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Notwithstanding its concerns with corruption allegations and Ukraine, reported yesterday, Ericsson seems to have had a successful MWC in terms of agreements announced at the show. Deals involving Zain KSA, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Ooredoo Qatar have all been highlighted by the telecoms giant during the event.

Vanu, a provider of equipment, tools and services that enable mobile network operators to profit by serving off-grid communities, has announced that, working with a local deployment partner, it has brought mobile network base stations to several communities in Nigeria.

Vodacom DRC has selected Intelsat to provide its Ku-band satellite services in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Satellite provider Telesat has announced a strategic cooperation agreement with pan-African technology group Liquid Intelligent Technologies to bring Telesat Lightspeed Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite services to Africa.

MTN Communications Nigeria Plc and Mafab Communications Limited, provisional winners in Nigeria’s 3.5GHz 5G spectrum licence sales, have made their full payment of $273.6 million each for their licenses to the Nigerian Communications Commission.

VMware, a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, has announced at MWC 2022 that it has been selected by Safaricom Ethiopia as its Telco Cloud Platform partner.

MTN Namibia has tapped Canadian firm NuRAN Wireless to deploy a minimum of 150 rural and suburban network sites over the next two years.

South African fibre broadband provider has acquired a 45% non-controlling stake in fibre/fixed wireless access provider Herotel.

Zimbabwean operator Econet Wireless and Botswana’s Mascom have this week both announced 5G launches that are to begin in their countries' capital cities.

In a statement to journalists earlier this week, Matano Ndaro, the director of licensing, compliance and standards at the Communications Authority of Kenya, has announced that 5G is coming to the country in 2022.

An uplifting recent story of African entrepreneurial success comes from South Africa where Lipa Payments, a local fintech start-up, has secured a R10 million (just under US$660,000) investment from Empowerment Capital’s Imvelo Ventures, which is backed by Capitec Bank.

South African regulator the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) revealed it has accepted six bidders for its spectrum auction next month.

Two of Somaliland’s operators, Somtel and Telesom, have agreed to enable interconnecting calls between their networks.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is scrapping its widely criticised device registration tax (Registre des Appareils Mobiles / RAM) from 1^st March.

Airtel Kenya has reportedly resolved a seven-year dispute with the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) over its operating licence in an out of court settlement.

There’s been a shift in ownership of the dominant telecoms player in the West African island country of Sao Tome and Principe.

In another example of the apparently unstoppable growth of digital finance in Africa, the African Development Fund (ADF) and the government of Malawi have signed a grant agreement for $14.2 million to undertake infrastructure upgrades and create a more efficient and transparent digital payment system.

Liquid Intelligent Technologies has added a multi-cloud-based solution from Teridion to its backbone services as part of its efforts to offer internet services that match changing enterprise needs.

Pan-African telecommunications service provider Seacom is acquiring selected infrastructure assets from Africell in Uganda.

The latest part of the long-running spectrum auction saga in South Africa is due to take place during the week of 11-14 April when regulator the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) and operator Telkom will meet in court.

Namibian power utility NamPower has deployed Ribbon’s IP Optical portfolio for its “The GridOnline” project.

The suspension of bidding for a second new Ethiopian mobile licence will not affect earlier licence winner Safaricom’s permission to offer mobile financial services, according to Dr Eyob Tekalgn Tolina, the State Minister of the country’s Ministry of Finance.

South Africa’s Independent Communications Authority (ICASA) will hold public hearings to review call termination rules, as the country’s largest operators dispute over a rule change eight years ago.

Customers of Ugandan operator Smile Communications have reportedly been unable to access its services for several days.

Zimbabwe operator Telecel announced its network is back to full working operation and rebuffed rumours it was shuttering due to debt, as customers experienced service outages due to expired licenses.

Ethiopia state-owned operator Ethio Telecom missed its H1 revenue target by 13.6% due to ongoing military conflict in the country.

With hopes high that the country might finally be able to auction spectrum after many delays, it seems that South Africa’s operators are now keen to get involved in the process.

The results of the Series 1 Offer for the sale of MTN Nigeria ordinary shares have come in – and by all accounts they seem to be very positive.