Vodafone Business Africa restructure continues with Enterprise offloads

Vodacom Group completed the sale of its business-to-business units in Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Zambia, as part of M&A-infused restructuring of regional enterprise division Vodacom Business Africa (VBA). African ICT service provider Synergy Communications, the buyer, announced the deal’s conclusion in early-April 2020, and in parallel flagged it was rebranding its business (to “Inq. Holdings”) and pursuing a new expansion strategy centred around cloud-based digital services. A further component, the sale of Vodacom Business Cameroon to Inq., is awaiting regulatory approval. VBA announced in 2019 that it was jettisoning several, higher-touch in-market units and moving to a more flexible partnership-based approach to services expansion (Vodafonewatch, #177, #182, and #184). The sale of its business in Ghana (to Vodafone Ghana) has already been completed, while the divestment of VBA’s Angolan unit (to Internet Technologies Angola) appears to remain in the pipeline.