04 November 2022

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has announced its proposed funding of NuRAN Wireless Inc. for an ambitious project which will see the deployment of mobile towers for affordable telecommunications services (voice and data) in underserved areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (850 towers) and Cameroon (242 towers).

The project will ultimately connect people in rural areas to the digital economy with the rollout of a 2.75G network, supporting the countries’ transition to the digital economy.

The US$36 million project falls under the COVID-19 Digital African Loan Envelope, which was designed to accelerate the deployment of digital infrastructure solutions in sub-Saharan Africa. The EIB would provide US$18 million in funding, with Euro8 million coming from DFI, and more than US$6 million has already been invested from NuRAN.

“We are now approaching final approval for the release of $26 million to further accelerate the deployment of rural sites in Cameroon and DRC,” said Francis Letourneau, CEO of NuRAN. “To date NuRAN has essentially financed the sites built through its own equity. The plan has always been to primarily use debt at the African subsidiary level to deploy new sites. The DFI’s mission is to invest in infrastructure projects that have major social and environmental impact for which we tick all the boxes. This financing will provide NuRAN with capital to reach up to 1100 live sites covering over 5 million population.”