7 August 2025
Sub-Saharan Africa has seen rapid development of communications services in recent years. However, economic and geographic challenges mean that over 60% of the population remains unconnected. Expanding connectivity is a critical challenge for Sub-Saharan Africa that solving will generate substantial socio-economic benefits.
The good news is that there are plenty of technical and policy solutions to this issue: deploying satellite broadband for hard-to-reach areas, increasing the affordability of devices and reducing barriers to private investment among them. Sharing infrastructure is another solution – and arguably one of the most impactful tools that network operators and regulators have to unlock rural coverage, make both rural and urban networks more affordable, and bridge the digital divide.
Economic rationale for network sharing
Most network operators share aspects of RAN costs, with variations on the depth of the sharing. Passive sharing is most common as the sharing of e.g. tower infrastructure requires less coordination and – often – less lock-in than active sharing. It can also be easily facilitated via third-party TowerCos, which enable cost sharing with no collaborative effort from the operators.
Active sharing enables deeper cost savings, but requires a higher level of planning and coordination between competing operators. This is true of both MORAN (active network assets) and MOCN (active assets plus spectrum), though MOCN often brings greater scrutiny from competition authorities due to the sharing of spectrum assets.
In brownfield active network sharing, where two existing grids are combined, we typically find that ~30% of sites can be consolidated. Removing this duplicate infrastructure – and, importantly, sharing future costs – can reduce capex by >30% and opex by 25-30%. However, note that the opex savings can be heavily reduced (5-15%) if the operators are locked into long-run TowerCo contracts or the TowerCos have active sharing rent uplifts.
In greenfield active network sharing, the cost savings are more significant with up to 40-45% savings on capex and 35-40% on opex possible depending on the technical solution chosen.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, operators face cost pressures exacerbated by specific regional features including access to power infrastructure, currency devaluations and – importantly – subscale market shares. For example, in Ethiopia, Ethio Telecom has over 80% subscriber market share, in Ghana MTN has more than 75%, and in Kenya Safaricom leads the market with a 65% subscriber share while Airtel, Telkom and Finserve share the remaining 35%.
Without sufficient scale, operators struggle to generate a business case for investing outside the easy-to-serve major cities as duplicating the market leader’s infrastructure becomes unviable. Network sharing between the smaller players can help to close the service gap in more complex areas, while cost sharing between large players is likely required to help expand coverage into deep rural environments. Access to shared infrastructure allows smaller operators to better compete on price and coverage.
Aetha has analysed active and passive network sharing across EMEA and APAC – contact our team for more insight on the business case for sharing.
Network sharing to bridge the digital divide
Several recent case studies illustrate how operators are leveraging active infrastructure sharing to expand network coverage cost-effectively. Such network improvements enable wider access – especially among lower-income rural areas – to the transformative technologies of broadband and mobile payment services, helping to close the digital divide.
Airtel and MTN have agreed to share networks in Nigeria and Uganda, with a focus on rural network expansion to improve connectivity to millions of customers. Following the conclusion of these agreements, Airtel and MTN are exploring similar network sharing arrangements in other Sub-Saharan African markets including Rwanda, Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville.
A second recent example is the new jointly-owned Orange-Vodacom NetCo in the DRC, where up to 2000 base stations will be deployed in underserved rural areas over a six-year period. The JV will also offer passive infrastructure sharing for the other MNOs to promote competition in remote regions.
An interesting feature of these deals is that they effectively undercut existing third-party Network-As-A-Service operators such as AMN and NuRAN. These operators have already brought active sharing to African markets, targeting rural areas with AMN deploying ~800 sites in uncovered areas in the last 18 months across 15 markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the third-party providers’ margins, smaller scale and lower purchasing power for network equipment clearly present challenges to the business case when compared with operator-owned network shares.
We can contrast the success of these infrastructure sharing arrangements – focused primarily on rural areas with the clear aim of expanding coverage – with the complexity inherent in full network mergers. While an excellent opportunity for mobile operators to realise value, particularly in markets with multiple subscale operators, both the technical integration of nationwide networks and commercials around valuation of assets are more difficult to agree. A good example of this is the abortive MTN-Telkom merger in South Africa.
Finally, we note that a large proportion of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population faces a so-called ‘usage gap’ rather than a ‘coverage gap’. Tools for closing this gap include addressing the cost of devices and developing knowledge and skills. However, increasing the affordability of connectivity – in both rural and urban areas – through network sharing is highly impactful in bridging the digital divide too.
A pragmatic path forward
We believe that policymakers should embrace – and for many, continue to support – active network sharing as a strategic tool to accelerate universal connectivity. Allowing subscale operators to share infrastructure allows them to compete effectively on price and coverage, especially in underserved and rural areas where closing the digital divide is a priority.
While satellite connectivity will continue to play a growing role in rural coverage, current capacity and cost constraints – especially for limited bandwidth direct-to-device services – mean that terrestrial networks remain central to bridging the digital divide for many years to come.
