19 April 2021

Millicom agreed to sell its entire operations for an undisclosed amount to Axian, an Antananarivo-based pan-African group that was part of the consortium that acquired  Millicom’s operations in Senegal in 2018.

Millicom, via its Tigo brand, counts more than 52m mobile subscribers across 11 countries in Latin America and Africa.

“We knew that asset for a while because Tanzania has huge potential,” Hassanein Hiridjee, the CEO of Axian, told the UK's Financial Times. “When we found that Millicom was divesting from Africa we said: ‘we must go there, we must’.”

For Axian, the entrance to the Tanzanian market comes at a time of great expectations after the east African country’s new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, signalled that she would improve strained relations with investors and multinational companies following five years of growing anti-market isolation under her predecessor, John Magufuli, who died in March.

“We already have shared infrastructure. We’re very much interested in this market, which is not far from our home market,” Hiridjee added.