Bharti Airtel’s African subsidiary, Airtel Africa has posted a strong set of financials for FY2020, fuelled by strong demand for its services in Nigeria.
Airtel Africa saw revenues grow by 11.2 per cent to $3.42 billion for the financial year to April 2020.
The figures were buoyed by a 24.1 per cent rise in revenues in its Nigerian division. Nigeria remains Africa’s most populous telecoms market and is seeing strong demand for mobile services, particularly 4G and mid tier smartphone handsets.
Many countries in Airtel’s African portfolio have been placed into lockdown, as governments attempt to limit the spread of the Covid 19 virus. This has caused a huge spike in demand for capacity across the continent. Despite this surge in demand, Airtel Africa’s chief executive officer, Raghunath Mandava told journalists from Reuters that it was difficult to predict the long term impact of the epidemic on Airtel’s businesses in Africa.
“In Africa, the spread of COVID-19 has lagged the rest of the world and, therefore, it is difficult to precisely forecast what the impact of this will be on customers and business. However, our performance during the month of April has been resilient,” he said.
