In line with its commitment to bridge the digital gap in Africa, West Africa’s pioneer solar-based internet and voice service provider, Tizeti, is set to expand its operations within Nigeria and Ghana, and into new neighboring Cote d’Ivoire and Togo in addition to mulling listing its Nigerian Subsidiary.
With over 2.8 million subscribers on its platform, a revenue
of over N11 billion over 10 years, and no debt, the firm is exploring an
Initial Public Offer (IPO) in the stock market for investors/shareholders while
setting its eyes on expanding its footprints across the Francophone and
Anglophone countries in West Africa.
Speaking at the second edition of Tizeti’s annual event
tagged ‘NeXTGEN 2.0: The Next Frontier’, the founder and chief executive
officer of Tizeti, Mr. Kendall Ananyi stressed that the broadband gap in Africa
is still very high and operators like Tizeti must expand to ensure that more
Africans have access to reliable, affordable and truly unlimited internet from
Tizeti. According to him, Tizeti has been providing affordable unlimited
internet service in Nigeria and Ghana using solar towers which has brought
about 30-50 percent cost savings on data cap plans and made it the preferred
option to its competitors.
“This expansion is very strategic for us and for the
continent. We have grown significantly within the last few years, being
profitable in three out of the last four years and paid our first dividend this
year. We currently have over 3884 hotspot locations and built 1 tower every
month since we started, with 2.8 million users in Nigeria. Today, Tizeti
delivers over 190TBPS of data a day, which is about 20% of what Airtel, the
second largest telco with coverage in 36 states delivers. Using publicly
available data on the website of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)
and our internal data, we are the number one fixed Internet Service Provider by
users and active users in Nigeria today and the ISP of the year 2022. And
there’s still so much room for growth. Internet users in Africa are still about
26% of the total population, with almost 900 million people unconnected. We are
now exploring the public markets for equity/debt to fund our next growth phase.
We have reserved our ticker at NASDAQ, and are exploring London Stock Exchange
as we are an LSE-Companies to Inspire, as well as the Nigerian Exchange NGX”,
Ananyi said.
Speaking on the Francophone expansion, the co-founder and
chief operating officer of Tizeti, Ifeanyi Okonkwo highlighted the increased
submarine cable investments in Africa to date, and the absence of middle-mile
and last-mile infrastructure that moves the capacity where it is needed. With
Tizeti’s new infrastructure build-out across West Africa, Tizeti plans to bridge
the digital divide and bring more Africans online via its unlimited service
offering.
“We believe that Africa offers the most significant
potential demand for broadband expansion, and we have looked at their
populations, their relative contributions to GDP, the prevalence of higher and
tertiary institutions, and other pool factors,” said Okonkwo.
Tizeti also launched new connectivity offerings, Tizeti
Turbo Connect, which provides up to 150MBPS fiber-connected capacity to homes
and offices, for NGN 60,000 (USD 85), and a new technology that allows it to
deliver up to 1000MBPS. The company also announced new energy initiatives that
minimize diesel cost consumption with solar panels and wind turbines across its
base stations. Interested users can pre-sign up for Tizeti’s new locations at https://wifi.com.ng/presignup
Other speakers at Tizeti’s NeXTGEN include Vickie Robinson,
General Manager, Microsoft Airband; Oremeyi Akah, Chief Customer Success
Officer, Interswitch; Dolapo Onah, General Manager, MainOne by Equinix; Elliot
Sangoleye, Head, Payments Acceptance and Digital Commerce, Providus; Gbolade
Emmanuel, CEO, Termii; Osayi Izedonmwen, CEO, Teesas; Modupe Okeowo, Country
Manager, Eutelsat; Sola Akindolu, CEO, Brass; Mayowa Owolabi, CEO, PaddyCover;
Vickie Robinson, General Manager, Microsoft Airband; Ionut Croitoru, EMEA Sales
Lead, Cambium, and Desayo Tomi-Solanke, COO, Trove. The partners include
MainOne, Providus Bank, Microsoft, Cambium, CSquared and Nokia.
Tizeti’s NeXTGEN 2.0 expanded the vision of the first
edition and provides a platform for stakeholders in African telecommunications,
technology, and business communities to strategize for Africa’s next frontier,
while networking, discovering new opportunities, and discussing breakthrough
trends in the global and African telecoms and technology ecosystem. The second
edition event had over 700 technology enthusiasts, IT innovators, startup
executives, corporate business leaders, and digital thought leaders and ended
with an exciting 10th-anniversary dinner.
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