06 March 2023

Orange Madagascar has signed an agreement with Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) to further extend its network coverage in rural areas of the country. The partners plan to deploy 500 base stations under the network-as-a-service (NaaS) model over the next ten years.

The sites that will be built as part of the project will support 2G and 3G. The deployment of the sites has already begun, and some should be operational before the end of the year.

This partnership comes about a month after Orange Madagascar signed a similar agreement with NuRAN Wireless to deploy 500 telecom sites on the east coast of Madagascar. These investments are part of the company’s goal to establish itself as the leading provider of digital services in the country.

Investment in rural areas should make it possible to accelerate the achievement of Orange Madagascar’s ambition, because these areas have a high concentration of unconnected people. The project should allow the MNO to reach more than one million new subscribers. According to the Communication Technology Regulatory Authority (ARTEC), only 46.38% of the Malagasy population has access to mobile services.

The project will also support AMN’s ambition to contribute to extending the mobile network in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa with the deployment of 10,000 towers by 2025.