As part of TowerXchange’s who’s who in middle-market towercos we spoke to Karo Akaba, Chief Commercial Officer at Pan African Towers. Mrs. Akaba has lots of experience in the tower industry having previously worked at SWAP Towers and HTN Towers. Pan African Towers is one of a number of Nigerian privately owned, independent “middle-market” towercos including Seal Towers, BCTek, Communications Tower Nigeria and Hotspot Networks. In this interview, we discuss their plans within Nigeria and international expansion, power strategy, and plans for 4G and 5G.
If you would like to know more, Pan African Towers will be taking part in TowerXchange Meetup Africa, in Johannesburg, on October 8-9th, click here to register or email Anna Mayhew at amayhew@towerxchange.com for more details.
TowerXchange: First please introduce yourself and the history of Pan African Towers:
Karo Akaba, Chief Commercial Officer, Pan African Towers:
Pan African Towers was licenced by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in the last quarter of 2017. Shortly thereafter, we signed a managed service and co-location agreement with a towerco for about 700 towers. Since 2017, we have expanded our portfolio to over 1,000 towers in Nigeria. Primarily, our expansion was from new build-to-suit sites for an anchor tenant, one of the mobile network operators (MNOs) in Nigeria. In addition, we have some monopoles and some billboards, but that isn’t a big part of our portfolio. Outside of Nigeria, we have an arrangement to manage 300 towers in Ghana. We have ambitions beyond Ghana and Nigeria, but our priority now is to build a solid footprint in these two markets.
In Nigeria, we work with all mobile network operators and the major broadband operators. Our tenancy ratio has been quite stable, in spite of the increase in tower portfolio because we are committed to growing the number of tenants per site. In addition to traditional MNOs, we also have non-traditional tenants like local wholesale internet service providers.
TowerXchange: What kind of growth opportunities exist and what challenges are faced by middle-market towercos operating in Nigeria and Ghana?
Karo Akaba, Chief Commercial Officer, Pan African Towers:
We are planning to grow organically, adding build-to-suit towers for our existing clients. But as everyone knows, towercos require scale to reach their full potential so we are looking for non-organic growth opportunities. We are speaking with smaller towercos about acquiring a combined portfolio of about 1,000 sites, which would bring our total managed sites up to around 2,000 by the end of the year.
We are aware that the largest operator in the market has a preference for one of Nigeria’s towercos and this places a limit on sites they can release to other towercos. Other operators are willing to give business to middle market towercos that can deliver towers at a good cost, with speed and excellent operations. We recently agreed commercials with 9mobile and we are finalising our contracts. Consequently, we have the potential to add over 500 sites this year.
TowerXchange: How would you characterise your energy strategy – what is reliability like at your sites and are you exploring renewable energy options?
Karo Akaba, Chief Commercial Officer, Pan African Towers:
Power is still a major challenge in Nigeria at the moment. Some sites are grid-connected but the grid is not very reliable, there are many urban sites where you have high demand but lack 24-hour reliable power. Where possible we connect to the grid, but we require diesel gensets to power our sites. We are exploring solar and hybrid solutions as energy saving is important.
Pan African Towers recently signed an agreement with a Canada-based energy solution company, for an Infrastructure Investment Partnership worth N7.2 billion (around US$20mn) and we are now at the initial phase of implementation in northern Nigeria. The partnership entails Pan African Towers leveraging the company’s green solutions to power its sites instead of relying on diesel-powered conventional generators, thus ensuring environmental sustainability whilst helping solve Nigeria’s energy problem.
TowerXchange: What’s the blend of macro towers versus rooftops, DAS, small cells and IBS in your portfolio, and how is that changing?
Karo Akaba, Chief Commercial Officer, Pan African Towers:
To be honest, nobody cares what their antennae is attached to, they care about height and whether the antennae is secure and accessible. For a towerco the only concern with billboards and other non-macro sites is that they are smaller structures which can take fewer tenants. For example, there are some water stanchion sites we are planning to acquire and we will need to fortify them, increase their height and possibly attach an additional pole to make sure they can hold a suitable number of tenants. But the space will be available in the location the tenants want, so it works for us. We are currently working on a proof of concept for small cell deployment and will share more information subsequently. We also have a few work-in-progress IBS/DAS locations in our portfolio.
TowerXchange: What are your plans beyond increasing your tower count? Are you exploring any new opportunities?
Karo Akaba, Chief Commercial Officer, Pan African Towers:
We have organic and non-organic expansion plans, but we’re also looking beyond macro-towers. Small cells are one area we are exploring. 4G is here in Nigeria and network densification is going to be required. Small cells can play a big role in solving the problem of densification. Investing in small cells now also gets us ready for 5G. It won’t be in Nigeria as soon as other markets, but we want to be ready for when it does.
If you would like to know more, Pan African Towers will be taking part in TowerXchange Meetup Africa, in Johannesburg, on October 8-9th, click here to register or email Anna Mayhew at amayhew@towerxchange.com for more details.
