In a press statement yesterday evening, French based telecom company Orange has finally announced its exist from Kenya. The Orange Group signed a binding agreement with Helios Investment to sale off its entire 70% stake in Telkom Kenya. Rumors of the company’s exits have been buzzing around since last year and the company had continuously denied them. Reports that the company was planning to exit the Kenyan market had caused a stir into the industry with stakeholders discerning about the future of mobile communication in the country. Even if analysts had always predicted that the Orange Kenya Operation was worse off compared to Uganda in 2014, what had kept the company in the market were the strong terms of exit the Kenyan government had imposed on the French based firm. This comes just a year after Orange exited Uganda and sold off all its 95% stake to Lebanese Telecom firm Africell.
The finalization of the transaction remains subject to approval from the relevant authorities. In a statement Orange Group says that;
[signoff icon=”quote-circled”]This signature reflects Orange’s constant focus on optimizing its portfolio of assets. The Africa and Middle-East region is a strategic priority for the Group.[/signoff]
Telkom Kenya is the country’s incumbent fixed-line operator and is the third player in the mobile market. The company, which operates a high-quality mobile data network, had four million mobile customers at the end of June 2015 according to figures published by the regulator.
