The Directorate General of SEACOM subsidiary in Uganda on Thursday announced it will acquire selected assets from Africell.
The acquisition is a crucial step for SEACOM to cement its foothold in East Africa, and a testimony of the company’s commitment to providing competitive and sustained connectivity plus ICT solutions across the region.
This will allow further expansion into East Africa, enabling it to maintain a firm grip and expansion of her clients across the region, reducing overeliance on wireless and fibre networks.
It will also lead to enhanced browsing security, through innitiatives like distributed denial of service (DDoS) and mail protection.
The Managing Director and Regional Head of Sales for SEACOM Tejpal Bedi, said the company is committed to ensuring end-to-end connectivity, and ICT solutions in the region.
“East Africa has been an important market for SEACOM ever since we first arrived on the shores of Mombasa in 2009,” explained Bedi.
“By officially establishing ourselves in Uganda through proprietary facilities and resources, we are prioritising widespread connectivity and opening up opportunities to work with businesses in search of quality Internet services.”
This latest development comes at the backdrop of SEACOM’s recent acquisition of a Kenyan service provider Hirani Telecom’s metro fibre network.
Cementing its ambitious vision, SEACOM is poised at taking over a wide portfolio of infrastructure, essential for connecting its customers in the region, like the 760 kilometres of fibre within the Ugandan capital city of Kampala and surrounding towns, a 250 square metre data centre, and office space for SEACOM representatives and staff members.
SEACOM has been providing wholesale solutions to Uganda since its inception in 2009 and corporate solutions since 2018, a greater local presence.
It provides a range of best-in-class enterprise connectivity solutions, that range from high-speed fibre or wireless internet access, to ethernet links, direct internet access and cloud services.
It enjoys a large footmark in Uganda’s financial services sector, and works with both private and governmental agencies, in hospitality, health, technology and education sectors.
Last year, Africell confirmed its exit from Uganda.
In a letter to its employees, the company said it had failed to achieve its goals in the Ugandan telecom sector.
“Over the past several months, Africell Group has conducted a detailed assessment of the future of Africell UG. Africell strives to be a leader not only in terms of mobile services but also in terms of community impact and the digitally-lead Transformation of society. In Uganda – a country with a mature and competitive telecoms sector – we believe that the opportunity to achieve this impact is increasingly limited,” Africell said.
“We have therefore taken the difficult decision to permanently end Africell UG’s operations in Uganda. This decision is being made in the long-term interests of the Ugandan telecoms sector. However, it has an immediate impact on many people – including you, a valued Africell employee,”It added.
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