One such conversation took place in 1998. I was running MSI, a software and consulting company in the UK, and I regularly worked with the world’s biggest telecom companies. To me it was obvious that huge opportunities existed for those companies to develop mobile communications in Africa.
One day I pulled aside a senior telecom executive and urged him to apply for a licence in Uganda, which was seeking assistance. He said, “Mo, I thought you were smarter than that! You want me to go to my board and say I want to start a business in a country run by this crazy guy Idi Amin?” I was stunned. I said, “Idi Amin left Uganda years ago!”
No expert
I didn’t consider myself an expert at sizing up business opportunities. I’d spent my adult life first as an academic, then as the technical director for British Telecom’s early foray into cellular communications, and ultimately running my own consulting company. But even I could see that developing mobile communications in sub-Saharan Africa was an opportunity too big to pass up.
Africa had no fixed-line phone networks, so mobile phones would face no competition. To me it was obvious that cellphones would be a huge success.
My clients refused to see it that way: Africa was too risky. So I decided I had to do it. I had no experience building this kind of company on my own. I knew I’d face hurdles
Celtel started out in 1998 with just five employees. Although the consulting firm provided our initial investment, I spent a significant amount of time raising capital: $16 million in the first year, to acquire licences and begin building infrastructure, and ultimately more than $415 million during our first five years.
The first challenge was to establish our credibility. We had to convince the regulators and telecom ministries that we could deliver. Fortunately, we had virtually no competitors, and I had managed to recruit an experienced board, which included Salim Ahmed Salim, a former prime minister of Tanzania.
One reason major telecom players were afraid of Africa was its reputation for corruption. So we insisted on accepting only licences we had won in an open bidding process.
We focused first on a handful of countries that had inexpensive or free network licences available, including Uganda, Malawi, the two Congos, Gabon and Sierra Leone.
At first Celtel was a sideline for MSI. But it quickly became apparent that the challenge of building such an ambitious operation was enough to merit my focused attention. So in 2000, I sold MSI to Marconi for more than $900 million, and put all my energy into building a cellular communications company that would defy the naysayers about Africa.
Each country where we set up operations offered unique challenges. Doing business in a place like the Democratic Republic of Congo was a nightmare because it had no good roads — and sometimes not even bad roads.
There were political challenges. In Sierra Leone we were in a region at war. We had to make it clear that we were a neutral company with no allegiances. When the capital fell to rebels, we had to pull our staff members out of the country.
They returned later with UK members of the UN peacekeeping mission, whom we provided with phones and service. Because both sides in the war needed to communicate, no one sabotaged our towers.
We always had great relationships with local communities. Because we didn’t deal in bribes, we looked for other ways to help the impoverished areas in which we were setting up operations. We built schools and clinics where we could. We looked after our local employees. We instituted management training and technical training – providing people who’d been denied an education with completely new skills.
Finding the money
By 2004, we had 5.2 million managed customers and operations in 13 countries, with revenue of $614 million and a $147 million net profit. Celtel was a strong, rapidly growing business. But raising money may have been my biggest challenge. Financial institutions simply didn’t see Africa the way they saw India and other emerging market economies.
Around that time we sought a loan. The banks required us to offer the assets of the whole company as security — to obtain just a few million dollars at draconian rates and terms. We eventually accepted the terms because we needed the loan, but clearly we had to find a better long-term source of capital.
We decided to do an initial public offering on a reputable stock exchange, such as London’s. When word got out, we received unsolicited offers to buy the whole company. We sold Celtel for $3.4 billion to the Kuwait-based Mobile Telecommunications Company (now Zain).
At the time of the sale, Celtel was operating in 13 African countries under licences that covered more than a third of the continent’s population. We’d invested more than $750 million in Africa and helped to bring the benefits of mobile communications to millions of its people.
Every now and then I think, “Wow, it was wonderful, and now it’s over.” But I’m ok with that.
Mo Ibrahim is the chairman of Satya Capital and of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which focuses on the governance of African countries.
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