After the seizure of 25% of Geni, owned by Leopoldino de Nascimento, in Unitel, the State now holds practically the entirety of the mobile operator, for the duration of the legal proceedings against Isabel dos Santos, who has had her 25% arrested since 2019 and is awaiting the outcome of the process.
Sonangol's departure from Unitel's shareholder structure was justified by the need for the oil company to focus on nuclear business, that is, on oil activity. However, it reinforced its position to 50% with the acquisition of PT Ventures.
Faced with the almost sole presence of the State and the need to sell at least 50%, the question that arises is who are the potential future shareholders of the mobile operator. The Economic Value, based on the history of movements in the market, selected some of the contemplated potentials.
These are the cases of Angorascom, NTD, the english Vodafone or Africell🇧🇷 Of Egyptian origin, Angorascom, with authorization from the President of the Republic, signed, in 2019, an agreement with Angola Telecom for the sub-concession of the mobile service for the exploration of the Unified Global Title, of the public company.
However, in July 2020, Angola Telecom announced that it was withdrawing from the agreement “because the legal technical requirements at the time were not met”.
The decision was preceded by information stating that Africell, which had won the public tender to be the fourth mobile operator, conditioned the start of operations with the termination of the contract between Telecom and Angorascom on the grounds that the said contract lacked a public tender.
The South African giant MTN, in turn, applied in the first public tender for the fourth mobile operator, held in 2018. They have given up claiming that the process was “addicted”. The winner, announced on April 4, 2019, was the then unknown Telstar, provoking an outcry in society.
Fourteen days later, President João Lourenço annulled the tender on the grounds that the company, among other flaws, had not presented the “balance sheet and income statements and statement on the global turnover for the last three years”, as required by the competition.
A second public tender was launched, the winner of which was Africell, which began operations in December. And, this time, he is on the list of potential future shareholders of the country's largest mobile operator.
An eventual acquisition of Unitel could help Africell to consolidate its position in the Angolan market. In turn, the English giant Vodafone has been present in Angola since March 2019 as a result of a strategic partnership agreement with Movicel which aimed, among other things, at improving roaming services, international connections, national coverage and, in general, the stabilization of Movicel's network.
However, at the time, Vodafone's representative for Africa, Vik Patel, assured that "Vodafone did not submit any license application", stressing that "the agreement is to support Movicel on its journey towards transformation, to become the second largest operator ”.
The partnership between Movicel and the giant English company also leads to consideration of the possibility of the two operators competing with a joint venture.
