Friday, September 25, 2009

KDN & Wananchi Secure Funding For Expansion

Two Kenyan broadband operators have announced that they have secured additional investment in their operations, funding future expansion of their respective networks.
 
According to a report by news agency Reuters, South Africa-based firm Allied Technologies (Altech) announced that it was raising its economic stake in Kenya Data Networks (KDN) from 51% to 60.8%. Altech revealed that it would invest USD39.5 million in KDN's fibre rollout, adding a further USD7.5 million to build a data centre in Nairobi, in conjunction with its co-shareholder in KDN, the Sameer Group.
 
The group said the data centre would offer disaster recovery, virtual application hosting, data and application backup, and an ethical hacking centre and data archiving facility to clients in the areas that will be connected by undersea cables, such as SEACOM and TEAMS. Altech CEO, Craig Venter, said: 'KDN is central to our strategy and our gateway to East Africa. Our further investment in this business is evidence of our confidence that the continent and in particular East Africa is poised for massive growth.'
 
Meanwhile, theafricareport.com reports that US-based private equity group Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) has invested USD25 million in Wananchi to expand its network infrastructure, funding an upgrade which will allow the operator to offer integrated digital pay-television, high speed internet and IP telephony services.
 
ECP chief executive, Tom Gibian, said: 'Following on the tremendous growth in African mobile penetration over the last ten years, we view broadband and related services as the next 'game changer' in African telecoms.'

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