Ethiopia’s government is discussing selling 10% of state-owned telecoms company Ethio Telecom via a local stock exchange that is being launched this year, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia’s telecoms industry, serving a population of about 120 million, was considered a big prize when Abiy took over in 2018 and promised to liberalise the economy.<\/p>\n
But recurring security problems, legislative changes and concern about the government’s commitment to opening up the tightly controlled economy have since\u00a0deterred investors.<\/p>\n
French telecoms firm Orange said in November that it had decided to withdraw from buying a stake of up to 45% in Ethio Telecom, which held a monopoly before a consortium led by Kenya’s Safaricom\u00a0won the country’s first private telecoms licence and started commercial operations in 2022.<\/p>\n
Abiy told a board meeting of government investment arm Ethiopian Investment Holdings on Tuesday that board members would “decide how to proceed regarding the second issue where we said we will sell 10% of Ethio Telecom’s shares to the public via the capital market,” according to a video clip of the meeting shared by state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Abiy did not respond to requests for comment about how the board deliberations on Ethio Telecom concluded.<\/p>\n
Abiy described the launch of the East African country’s stock exchange as “a game-changer, supporting Ethiopia in achieving its growth aspirations and attracting new capital” in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
A telecoms industry insider said the plan was for the government to retain 45% of Ethio Telecom, sell 45% to investors and list 10% on the stock exchange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ethiopia’s government is discussing selling 10% of state-owned telecoms company Ethio Telecom via a local stock exchange that is being launched this year, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Tuesday. Ethiopia’s telecoms industry, serving a population of about 120 million, was considered a big prize when Abiy took over in 2018 and promised to liberalise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"Reuters","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32],"tags":[124,506,114,2106],"class_list":["post-10876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-economy","tag-abiy-ahmed","tag-ethio-telecom","tag-ethiopia","tag-ethiopian-investment-holdings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}