Africell Uganda, whose full legal name was Africell Uganda Limited (AUL), was an information and communication technology network company in

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...

. It was the third-largest telecommunications company in the country, by customer numbers. However, the company closed all its businesses in Uganda in 2021 based on a careful assessment of the long-term commercial outlook for the business.

Location

The headquarters and main office of AUL were located in the Africell Office Building, at 28–30 Clement Hill Road, on Nakasero Hill in the Central Division of

Kampala Kampala (, ) is the capital and largest city of Uganda. The city proper has a population of 1,680,000 and is divided into the five political divisions of Kampala Central Division, Kawempe Division, Makindye Division, Nakawa Division, and Ruba ...

, the capital and largest city in the country. The coordinates of the company headquarters are 0°19'09.0"N, 32°35'24.0"E (Latitude:0.319169; Longitude:32.589992).

History

Africell Uganda was established in May 2014, when

Africell Africell Group is a mobile technology company providing voice, messaging, data, mobile money and other integrated telecoms services to over 16 million subscribers across Africa. Company overview Africell was founded in 2001. It has US ownershi ...

acquired the majority stake that Orange Telecom owned in its Uganda cellular network. Africell paid $12 million for that stake, inheriting an estimated 1,000,000 subscribers. In November 2014, the Group Chairman and CEO announced plans to invest US$150 million in the next five years, to upgrade the Africell network in Uganda.

Subscribers

In 2014, the network subscribers in Uganda were estimated at one million. As of September 2018, its subscriber customer numbers had risen to 2.1 million. In April 2020, the company's website gives the number of subscribers as over 3,000,000. The table below illustrates the progressive customer growth for the company.

Ownership

The table below summarizes the shareholding in the business.

Operations

In 2018, Africell Holdings, the parent company of Africell Uganda, secured a loan of US$100 million from the

Overseas Private Investment Corporation The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) was the United States Government's Development finance institution until it merged with the Development Credit Authority (DCA) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID ...

(OPIC), to expand operations in Uganda and the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. Africell Holdings maintains subsidiaries in the Gambia,

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

, DR Congo and Uganda. As of January 2015, Africell Uganda maintained coverage in the majority of Uganda's geographical area.

Closure and exit from Uganda

In September 2021 the company announced that it would close business and exit the country, 7 October 2021. At the time of its closure, the Telcom had an estimated 3 million subscribers, accounting for about four percent(4%) market share.

References

External links

Website of Africell Uganda

Africell Contacts
{{coord, 00, 19, 09, N, 32, 35, 24, E, display=title Telecommunications companies established in 2014 Kampala District Telecommunications companies of Uganda 2014 establishments in Uganda