Namibia’s only mobile telecommu-nications company MTC signed a major stake to a Portuguese firm, its holding company announced on Tuesday. Namibia Post and Telecom Holdings (NPTH), a wholly govern-ment-owned enterprise sold 34% of the issued shares in Mobile Telecom-munications (MTC), to Portugal Telecom, NPTH said.

"Our Portuguese partners acquired the 8,500,000 ordinary shares available for N$ 120 per share, translating into N$1,02 billion," NPTH board chairman Steve Motinga said at the signing ceremony on Tuesday. Portugal Telecom was chosen as the successful candidate in March this year among 15 bidders, including South Africa and Mauritius.

"We will introduce advanced technology, new services and new products to Namibia," said Joao Pedro Baptista, chairman of Portugal Telecom, "they could later be linked to other countries in Southern Africa where we have branches."

Portugal Telecom is present in 7 African countries including Angola, Botswana and Mozambique, with diversified telecommunications services like wireless, wireline and Pay TV. Its operations in Africa account for some 5 million subscribers with a total revenue of some 840 million euros generated in Africa during 2005. Namibia’s MTC obtained its cellular telecommunications license in Namibia in 1994 and has covered 45 percent of Namibia’s vast geographical area since it started operations in 1995. MTC said it had a customers base of about 500,000, nearly a quarter of Namibia’s population of 1,9 million. "This is a teledensity of some 23% and comparable to neighbouring countries," said MTC managing director Bengt Strenge in a recent company profile, "with only South Africa (60%) and Botswana (41%) scoring higher penetration rates."

MTC was established in 1995 as a joint venture between Namibia Post and Telecommunications Holdings and two Swedish enterprises, Telia Overseas AB and Swedfund International AB. In May 2004, NPTH acquired the 49% stake of the two Swedish partners. MTC has up to now enjoyed a market monopoly for over a decade. However, the state-owned Namibia Commu-nications Commission (NCC) is in the process of opening the market to a second bidder by tender later this year.
In anticipation of this, Namibia’s electricity utility, NamPower has
established PowerCom (Pty) Ltd in 2004. The consortium membership consists of a 51% Namibian ownership and 49% Norwegian ownership. PowerCom has been granted the 2nd cellular licence in the meantime.
The local partners are the Namibia Mineworkers’ Investment Holding Company (NAMIC) (Pty) Ltd. - through Zeven Investments, and Old Mutual Namibia. Telecom Manage-ment Partner (TMP) of Norway is the foreign shareholder in PowerCom. TMP is a fully owned subsidiary of Telenor, a company listed at the Oslo stock exchange. Dr Leake Hangala, fomrerly the MD of NamPower is now the second vice president of Telenor and he will set up an Africa office soon. The Norwegian state holds 63% of the TMP shares.