Tizeti, West Africa’s solar-based internet provider, is set to expand its operations within Nigeria, Ghana, and into new neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire and Togo, in line with its commitment to bridge digital gaps in Africa.
Kendall Ananyi, chief executive officer of Tizeti, while speaking at the second edition of its annuals event tagged ‘NeXTGEN 2.0: The Next Frontier’ disclosed 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.
“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 percent of what large Nigerian telcos with coverage in 36 states deliver,” Anayi said.
He said, “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 percent 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 the London Stock Exchange as we are an LSE-Companies to Inspire, as well as the Nigerian Exchange NGX.”
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Similarly, the company noted that it is considering listing its Nigerian Subsidiary, adding that with over 2.8 million subscribers on its platform and a revenue of over N11 billion over 10 years, the firm is exploring an Initial Public Offer (IPO) in the stock market for investors and shareholders, while setting its eyes on expanding its footprints across the Francophone and Anglophone countries in West Africa.
Ifeanyi Okonkwo, co-founder of Tizeti, speaking on the Francophone expansion, 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, adding that Tizeti’s new infrastructure build-out across West Africa plans to bridge the digital divide and bring more Africans online with 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,” Okonkwo said.
Meanwhile, the company noted that it 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, while also announcing new energy initiatives that minimize diesel cost consumption with solar panels and wind turbines across its base stations.
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