Telecoms tower company IHS Nigeria, a subsidiary of IHS Towers, announced on Wednesday that Airtel Nigeria has signed a deal renewing its contract and expanding its tenancies to almost 10,000 over the next five years.
Under the deal, Airtel Nigeria has extended the term of its existing 6,000 tenancies until December 2031. Meanwhile, it has also committed to take an additional 3,950 tenancies over the next five years, with the majority expected to happen during 2024 and 2025.
The agreement includes 2,500 colocations in addition to 5G amendments and build-to-suit sites to be owned and operated by IHS Nigeria.
The two companies also agreed to cooperate on new green initiatives on the collective sites going forward, in line with Airtel Africa’s sustainability strategy (launched in October 2021), as well as IHS Towers’ ‘Carbon Reduction Roadmap’ aimed at reducing its intensity metric by 50% by 2030.
IHS Towers says it currently has nearly 40,000 towers in Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Kuwait, Nigeria, Peru, Rwanda, South Africa and Zambia.
Sam Darwish, Chairman and CEO of IHS Towers, said the expansion and renewal deal with Airtel Nigeria will “strengthen our collaboration to help facilitate mobile connectivity in our largest market, supporting our customers in rolling out new sites throughout Nigeria.”
The deal comes on the heels of IHS Nigeria having completed deployment of 10,000km of fibre optic cables across Nigeria via subsidiary Global Independent Connect Limited (GICL) as part of its Fibre-to-the-Tower (FTTT) strategy.
