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2025 sees the continuation of a conservative approach to towerco strategy, focusing on increasing co-locations, strategic build-to-suit, and driving operational efficiencies. In their end-of-year financial results, American Tower, Helios Towers and IHS Towers all expressed commitment to focusing on colocations and expanding partnerships with blue-chip operators.

Helios Towers closed 2024 returning to 2.0x after dipping below 2.0x following its acquisition spree in 2022. IHS Towers has pushed their tenancy ratio above the 1.5x mark, hitting 1.51x. American Tower does not publish its tenancy ratios, but reported over 80% of new site tenant billings coming from Africa & APAC in 2024.

In addition to tenancy growth, American Tower has also renewed its tower lease agreement with Airtel Africa for a 12-year extension of around 7,100 sites across Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Niger. Outside the big three international towercos, other players have also been expanding their tenancies.

Vodacom carve-out MAST Services, having now largely completed its initial operational and technical framework after 28 RFPs, has begun bidding for MTN tenancies in earnest. Swiftnet, having completed its acquisition from Telkom by Actis, is now gearing up for a similar processto win new tenancies. Other towercos such as Infratel, Minara Towers and TowerCo of Africa are also expanding partnerships beyond their anchor tenants.

Tenancy ratio expansion has become a key KPI for assessing growth and performance, as Africa’s once highly active build-to-suit market has yet to return to pre[1]COVID levels. There are some exceptions; Tanzania has become one of Africa’s busiest tower markets driven by intense competition between its three leading operators. Kenya also continues to see steady rollout driven by market demand from Safaricom, Airtel Kenya and Jamii.

Nigeria has seen consistent organic growth despite volatile macroeconomic conditions, but a recovery period spurred on by the regulators decision to increase tariffs by 50% for the first time in 12 years, and as part of this a heavy focus on quality of service, is breathing life intoa deeply distressed telco sector. The government has announced a new public-private partnership including the investment and co-ownership of 7,000 new towers.

The MTN-Airtel-IHS three-way lease renewal has also seen some progress. This comes after MTN Group originally declined to renew 2,500 sites with IHS Towers, instead turning to American Tower, which was since revised to split these leases between both towercos: American Tower hosting MTN on 2,100 new sites while IHS retains 1,430. After some stalling of discussions post-announcement, American Tower has seen a healthy number of tenancies from MTN with an expectation of relocating all equipment by H2 2025.Two of Africa’s once busiest tower markets, South Africa and the DRC, have fared differently.

The former remains Africa’s most competitive tower market, with a recorded 38 towercos present, but mobile operator network expansion spending has not returned despite the recovery of South Africa’s grid. In 2023, grid utility company ESKOM saw a rapid decline in its ability to meet demand, leading to heavy loadshedding. As a result, mobile operators scrambled to redirect capital from rollout to resiliency, and towercos were driven into power-as-a-service. After a liberalisation of the grid to allow independent power producers, and several new power plants coming online, mobile operators haven’t yet returned their investment levels in network rollout to what they were.

Africa’s M&A landscape has remained conservative since the last wave of sale leasebacks completed in 2022. In 2023, Vodacom South Africa carved out MAST Services, in 2024 Actis acquired Swiftnet from Telkom. However, Africa might be on the cusp of a new round of acquisitions. The latest deal to surface is Paradigm Tower Ventures’ acquisition of IHS Rwanda, which was part of a rumored sale driven by IHS Towers’ need to raise capital and exit smaller markets.

A familiar name, Paradigm Tower Ventures, previously Paradigm Infrastructure, had acquired Airtel Tanzania’s tower portfolio in a joint venture with SBA Communications under Minara Towers. While not confirmed, it is expected that Paradigm will sell its stake in Minara to SBA Communications (who have a right of first refusal). Alongside Rwanda, IHS Towers was rumored to be exploring a sale of Zambia as well. JP Morgan is understood to be the mediator of this deal, and while nothing has been made public, TowerXchange is aware that Zambian towerco Infratel is considering making a formal inquiry.

The sale of both Rwanda (and potentially Zambia), in addition to previous sales of their Kuwait portfolio to TASC Towers, will allow IHS Towers to focus on its core markets; namely Nigeria, South Africa and Brazil. The towerco also secured a US$1.2bn bond issuance, widely seen as a surprising success and an indication that despite tough market conditions, investors continue to see value in both IHS Towers and emerging market towercos. The funds will enable IHS Towers to refinance some of its near-term debt and lengthen its debt maturity profile, as well as support organic growth.

There are also rumblings of potential future deals on the horizon. With MAST Services operationally active in South Africa, Vodacom is exploring options for its remaining African portfolio. In the DRC, Vodacom and Orange have announced a joint-venture rural towerco to deploy and operate rural towers in a bid to make geographic coverage more economically viable for both operators. In Lesotho, TowerXchange is aware of an ongoing inquiry into the acquisition of Vodacom’s 500 tower portfolio, although there has been no confirmation of sale. Vodacom also operate towers in Ghana, Mozambique, and a large portfolio of sites in Egypt after Vodafone Egypt was transferred to Vodacom.

Safaricom, part-owned by Vodacom and the Kenyan government, has also been reviewing its towers in Kenya and Ethiopia. Safaricom continues to lobby the Ethiopian government to license towercos and assist the operator with its ongoing network rollout, while in Kenya corporation tax frameworks have proven to be the leading barrier to any carve-out.

Orange still retains the majority of its tower portfolio in Africa and has hinted at a deal for some time. Most recently, in a press release announcing a partnership between Orange Middle East and Africa and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), ““various telecom infrastructure construction and deployment projects (towers, fiber, etc.) will be carried out in the targeted countries over the coming years”. This clue suggests we can expect to see something from Orange, albeit not in the short-term.

Mobile operator partnerships are also expanding outside towercos. Airtel Africa and MTN announced a collaboration of fibre and wireless infrastructure sharing to improve network efficiency in Nigeria and Uganda, agreeing to access each other’s mobile networks over a potential RAN sharing model. Currently the deal only applies to where MTN and Airtel Africa have overlapping markets, but further deals in Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda and Zambia are being explored. Both operators have also commented that they remain open to collaborating with other operators across all of their markets.

Africa’s Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) have also seen growth. Communication & Renewable Energy Infrastructure (CREI) signed partnerships with MTN South Sudan and received US$16mn in investment from Norfund to deploy ESCO service to 2,876 towers in Mali. While no further deals have been made public, TowerXchange understands that there are several ongoing ESCO RFPs and discussions taking place.

Figures included in the report:

1: Breakdown of ownership of Africa’s telecom towers

2: Estimated tower counts for selected countries in SSA

3:  Tower ownership by Africa’s three largest independent towercos

4: TowerXchange SSA towerco activity and tower transaction heatmap

5a: Multi-country towerco footprints in sub-Saharan Africa

5b: Single-country towercos

6: ESCO footprint in sub-Saharan Africa

7: SIMs per tower in Africa

Figure 8: Angola – estimated tower count

Figure 9: Burkino Faso – estimated tower count

Figure 10: Cameroon – estimated tower count

Figure 11: Chad – estimated tower count

Figure 12: Congo Brazzaville – estimated tower count

Figure 13: Cote d’Ivoire – estimated tower count

Figure 14: DRC – estimated tower count

Figure 15: Ethiopia – estimated tower count

Figure 16: Gabon – estimated tower count

Figure 17: Ghana – estimated tower count

Figure 18: Kenya – estimated tower count

Figure 19: Madagascar – estimated tower count

Figure 20: Malawi’s slow mobile broadband (Kbps)

Figure 21: Mozambique – estimated tower count

Figure 22: Nigeria – estimated tower count

Figure 23: Senegal – estimated tower count

Figure 24: South Africa – estimated tower count

Figure 25: Tanzania – estimated tower count

Figure 26: Uganda – estimated tower count

Figure 27: Zambia – estimated tower count

Figure 28: Zimbabwe – estimated tower count

Figure 29: Africa’s biggest tower transactions to date