Africa’s biggest wireless firm MTN Group Ltd. says American Tower Corp. will take over its Nigerian tower operations from IHS Holding Ltd. from 2025.
The company said it was pro-actively re-negotiating its tower contracts in Nigeria as the lease of approximately 2,500 of its network sites in its largest market, for which IHS had provided services, will expire in 2024 and 2025.
Analysts say it could amount to over N390bn in lost revenues for IHS once the shift takes effect.
Last year, MTN completed a sale-and-lease back deal with IHS to take over more than 5,700 of its tower sites in South Africa.
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However, since then the relationship between the two companies has soured and MTN is currently in a shareholder dispute with the tower firm, in which it holds 26%, over governance issues.
It is not the first time that MTN is doing a deal with American Tower which previously bought MTN’s stake in its tower operations in Uganda and Ghana.
