British telecoms giant Vodafone Group has announced a strategic framework agreement with Afrimax, a group focused on offering 4G services in sub-Saharan Africa, under which the duo will ‘cooperate and explore opportunities for Partner Market agreements in the region’. In addition, Vodafone Group has also announced a Partner Market agreement with Afrimax in Uganda, under which the two companies will offer customers voice and data products and services using the ‘Vodafone Uganda’ brand. Vodafone Group’s multinational corporate customers will, meanwhile, benefit from the addition of Uganda to their existing contracts for international managed services.
Commenting on the development, Vodafone Partner Markets Chief Executive Stefano Gastaut said: ‘Uganda is an attractive market and we are delighted to welcome Afrimax to our successful Partner Markets community, which already operates in more than fifty countries. We look forward to exploring the potential for further Partner Market agreements in sub-Saharan Africa with Afrimax, under our framework cooperation agreement.’ Afrimax CEO Peter Langkilde and CFO Rob Philpott added: ‘The partnership with Vodafone solidifies our ongoing plans to be a leading provider of high speed network services in sub-Saharan Africa.’
As previously reported by CommsUpdate, in September 2014 Netherlands-based Afrimax Group, which was founded in 2013 by a trio of former Millicom International Cellular (MIC) executives, was said to be planning to deploy Time Division-Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) networks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Malawi. The start-up – which currently claims to hold licences and spectrum in 12 countries across sub-Saharan Africa – was at that date said to be hiring Radio Access Network (RAN) technicians to deploy its TD-LTE networks in the aforementioned markets, although no prospective launch date were divulged by the company. Afrimax meanwhile already has a pair of active wireless broadband networks, in Uganda and Rwanda, both of which were deployed following assistance from the International Finance Corporation (IFC).