August 17, 2007
Darfur the telecoms market
Still away - but Reuters just published the feature I was working on when I left.
As other firms exit, phone companies enter SudanKHARTOUM (Reuters) - Bright yellow banners sprang up overnight along the banks of the Nile then spread along the ten-lane highways and crowded market streets of Sudan's traffic-clogged capital, Khartoum.
They were the first steps in a campaign by South Africa's MTN to stake a claim in one of Africa's last big undeveloped mobile phone markets.
Foreign investors have steered clear of Sudan in recent years, following the international uproar over the crisis in Darfur and subsequent strengthening of U.S. sanctions against Khartoum.
Britain's Rolls Royce announced plans to pull out in April, joining Germany's Siemens, Switzerland's ABB and Canada's CHC Helicopter in the queue to exit.
But the newly booming telecoms market in the oil-rich east African country has proved too tempting for mobile phone companies to resist. For them, the vast expanses of Sudan's western Darfur region are not so much a disaster zone as one more unexploited mobile phone market waiting to be tapped.
Posted by aheavens at August 17, 2007 11:22 AM
Comments
Thanks Andrew for your blog about Ethiopia and now Sudan.
Could you expand on this story and compare its development with that of Ethiopia ?
It would be a realestic one atleast it is comparing Apple to Apple.
Robe
Posted by: Robe at August 17, 2007 8:18 PM
It's no wonder for the OIL rich Sudan, to attract such investment and those who're leaving today will come back tomorrow with a different name, otherwise the Chinese will take all the benefit of the Petro dollar to the envy of Western corporations.
Obviously by these time we all know the difference of producing Oil and cultivating Coffee, in terms of its accelerated growth and expanding GDP of a country. Hence it well never going to be the two sides of a coin for obvious reasons.
Posted by: lencho at August 19, 2007 5:09 PM
There were mobile companies which wanted to invest in Ethiopia like they do now in Sudan. Unfortunately the greedy and the cowardly Ethiopian leadership couldn't face outside competition from investors or stand criticism from the people for its mismanagement of the country.
Posted by: Joseph at August 20, 2007 10:34 PM