Tizeti, a Nigerian internet service provider, has partnered with Microsoft to bring its broadband solution to Cote d’Ivoire.
The partnership, Tizeti’s second international partnership after partnering with Eutelsat to boost broadband penetration would make Cote d’Ivoire the third country that Tizeti is present in after Ghana and Nigeria. The company also has plans to expand to Togo.
Tizeti says that the partnership would bring internet access to almost five million people by addressing the significant broadband gap in Côte d’Ivoire. The country’s internet penetration rate stood at 45.4%, with 12.94 million internet users in Côte d’Ivoire at the start of 2023.
In Côte d’Ivoire, the average price of 1GB of data is $3.06, making it the 173rd most expensive country in the world and higher than the most expensive plans in Nigeria ($2.96) and Ghana ($1.23). For context, the highest price in Côte d’Ivoire is $15.31. According to Kendall Ananyi, the founder and CEO of Tizeti, the company uses solar-powered towers to help lower the price of data in Ghana and Nigeria by bringing 30% to 50% cost savings on data cap plans. ( Solar-powered towers can save costs on power generation)
“We are thrilled to partner with Microsoft to bring reliable and affordable high-speed internet access to underserved communities in Côte d’Ivoire. Our mission at Tizeti is to bring affordable and reliable internet to more Africans outside the digital envelope, and this partnership is a significant step forward in achieving that goal,” Ananyi shared.
Tizeti will leverage its low-cost wireless technologies to roll out high-speed internet infrastructure with Microsoft’s Airband Initiative. The initiative is focused on advancing digital equity—access to affordable internet, affordable devices, and digital skills—as a platform for empowerment and digital transformation across the world.
Tizeti has been profitable in three of the last four years and, as of August 2022, had generated over ₦11 billion in revenue. “In the last 10 years of our operation, we have been able to generate ₦11 billion as revenue and this we achieved without any debt as of today. We have grown significantly within the last few years, being profitable in three out of the last four years and paid our first dividend this year. We currently have over 3884 hotspot locations and built one tower every month since we started, with 2.8 million users in Nigeria. Today, Tizeti delivers over 190 TBPS of data a day, which is about 20% of what Airtel, the second largest telco with coverage in 36 states, delivers,” Ananyi shared.
