NIGER – Orange, France’s biggest telecoms company, has completed the sale of its Orange Niger division to the Zamani Com SAS company, for an undisclosed value
Orange said in a press statement that the sale of its entire 95.5% stake in Orange Niger to Zamani Com was concluded following approval by the relevant authorities.
Reuters said that Orange’s operations in Niger have been hit by difficult market conditions and tax disputes with the Niger government, factors that may have prompted the sale of the business and subsequent exit from the Niger telecommunications market.
Orange noted that company’s services will continue to be marketed under the Orange brand during a transition period and despite its exit from the Niger market, Africa and the Middle East still remained a key area for the company.
Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with sales of 41 billion euros in 2018 and 148,000 employees worldwide at 30 September 2019, including 88,000 employees in France.
The Group has a total customer base of 268 million customers worldwide at 30 September 2019, including 209 million mobile customers and 21 million fixed broadband customers.
20 out of the 27 countries where Orange has operations are based in Africa and they include Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal, Madagascar, Mali, Tunisia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Orange is also a leading provider of global IT and telecommunication services to multinational companies, under the brand Orange Business Services. In March 2015, the Group presented its new
“Orange would like to thank the employees at Orange Niger for the work accomplished since the subsidiary’s creation and the teams who worked on the company takeover project,” the company concluded.
Zamani Com S.A.S. – the new owner of Orange Niger business- is wholly owned by Mr Mohamed Rissa of Rimbo Invest and Mr Moctar Thiam of Greenline Communications, both minority shareholders of Orange Niger.
