Despite facing significant challenges in the first half of the year, MTN’s Bayobab delivered strong financial results.
The company navigated a complex landscape that included the ongoing conflict in Sudan, local currency volatility, and disruptions caused by multiple subsea cable cuts. These cable cuts led to downtime for eight major subsea cables connecting the African continent, with four of these cables on the west coast of Africa experiencing simultaneous outages.
Remarkably, Bayobab managed to restore service within a few days, leveraging existing redundant capacity links and the newly installed Equiano cable.
In this challenging environment, Bayobab achieved a resilient financial performance, with consolidated external revenue increasing by 4.9% to R3.4 billion for the six months ending 30 June 2024.
The conflict in Sudan and the depreciation of the naira, which influenced pricing and traffic, had a negative impact on the Communication Platforms segment’s external revenue.
However, despite these setbacks, the segment still recorded a 5.0% year-on-year increase in external revenue. The Fibre segment also demonstrated resilience, with external revenue rising by 4.6%, though cable cuts did delay the conclusion and implementation of some contracts.
In the first half of the year, Bayobab secured new fixed connectivity infrastructure deals worth $9.4 million, underscoring the company’s ability to drive growth even amid significant headwinds.
Also read: MTN’s Bayobab To Spend R6 Billion Building Africa Fibre Cable
Bayobab, a wholly owned subsidiary of MTN Group, has teamed up with Africa50, an infrastructure investment platform, to build a terrestrial fibre optic cable network connecting the eastern shores of Africa to those on the continent’s west.
Bayobab, formely known as MTN GlobalConnect, has signed a partnership with Africa50 to develop Project East2West.
The partnership will invest up to $320 million or R6 billion connecting ten African countries over the years 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The Project East2West partnership will help bridge Africa’s connectivity gap by improving broadband access for landlocked African countries and offer substantial improvements for data traffic in Africa.
It will also boost consumption of local content throughout the region and promote regional economic development.
