Ethiopia will launch a tender for a new international telecoms licence in June, Reuters reports, citing Balcha Reba, director general of the Ethiopian Communication Authority (ECA). ‘We have planned to launch the tender in June. More details will be released when we approach the launch date,’ Reba informed the news agency via a text message.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, in May 2021 Ethiopia’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the ECA named Global Partnership for Ethiopia (GPE), a private consortium comprising Safaricom, Vodafone Group, Vodacom Group, CDC Group and Sumitomo Corporation, as the winning bidder for one of two nationwide concessions that it had put up for grabs. The process to issue a second licence was initiated on 28 September 2021, but suspended on 22 December 2021.
Newcomer Safaricom Ethiopia went on to stage a full commercial launch in October 2022, breaking Ethio Telecom’s monopoly on the sector. Running in parallel, in November 2022 the MoF issued an EoI for the partial privatisation of Ethio Telecom.