Ethiopia has brushed off claims that Safaricom was shortlisted for license.
Rumor had it that Safaricom was expanding to Ethiopia, however it’s false. The Ethiopian communications authority issued a statement on Twitter and dismissed the claims that have quickly spread.
The tweet read:
“We wish to clarify that to date no proposals have been received for the 2 new telecom licenses, and no prospective bidder has been shortlisted, prequalified nor excluded from participating in the bid process,”
Although Ethipia has attracted a lot of attention from several telecoms operators, some applications were not considered as they were not from telcos operating companies and was considered incomplete. The authority has been accepting requests and submissions and will officially end on the 5th of April.
Ethiopia currently holds a large population of 100 million people but even with the numbers they still have a very low penetration rate. Although Safaricom has not been validated by the authorities they managed to raise KSh 55 billion in the quest for this license and it’s quite understandable.