Liquid Telecom to invest US$400mn in Egyptian network infrastructure and data centres

Pan-African telecoms group Liquid Telecom is investing 8 billion Egyptian Pounds (US$400million) (€349.2 million) in Egypt over the next three years. This is part of a major partnership with Telecom Egypt which includes network infrastructure and data centres. The investment was made during a signing ceremony between the two companies at the Africa 2018 Forum. This historical agreement was signed by Ahmed El Beheiry, managing director and chief executive officer of Telecom Egypt, and Strive Masiyiwa – group executive chairman of Liquid Telecom’s parent company Econet. Telecom Egypt will use the network to connect Egyptian businesses to the rest of Africa, whilst also partnering with Liquid Telecom to build data centres across Egypt. Following an initial investment of $50m (€43.6m) in data centres and cloud services, Liquid Telecom plans to invest an additional $350m (€305.5m) in broadband and financial inclusion initiatives, as well as high capacity data centres. These will be similar to some of the best-in-class data centres in South Africa.