MainOne Cable Firm Nigeria Restricted lately celebrated 10 years within the enterprise of bridging the digital divide in West Africa.
Because the supplier of the primary privately owned, open entry 7,000-kilometer undersea excessive capability cable submarine connection in West Africa, MainOne continues to draw the curiosity of people, company our bodies and authorities establishments throughout the continent.
Nevertheless, the failure of the corporate’s administration to supply its monetary statements since December 2014 raises questions.
Unsurprisingly, MainOne was amongst six telecom operators lately mandated by the Nigerian Communications Fee (NCC) to submit their yearly monetary statements, inside 7 months after the top of their monetary yr.
The corporate, although celebrated, will not be with out its challenges, which its monetary statements would make clearer. Nevertheless as we await the submission of the assertion, Nairametrics seems into MainOne on this week’s Firm Profile to know what makes it tick.
The way it began
Funke Opeke returned to Nigeria in 2008, the place she was confronted with ridiculously poor web connectivity, so she determined to do one thing about it.
She began Mainstreet Applied sciences, the builders of MainOne Cable in the identical yr, to function a service and community options supplier, not solely in Nigeria however in West Africa.
What’s now acknowledged as certainly one of Africa’s largest cable corporations began with all of Opeke’s financial savings as start-up capital. She encountered stiff challenges associated to elevating extra capital to care for the foundational works, feasibility research, enterprise plans, and technical plans. Nevertheless, the corporate was capable of pull by means of.
On April 28, 2008, Principal Road Applied sciences awarded a turnkey provide contract for the MainOne Cable System to Tyco Telecommunications. After finishing and commissioning the venture, MainOne went dwell on July 22, 2010.
The corporate has since grown in leaps and bounds from its little beginnings. Its connections prolong from Portugal to West Africa, with Cable Landings Stations alongside the route in Accra (Ghana) and later to different international locations in Africa like Dakar (Senegal), Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), and Lagos (Nigeria).
The Phase1 cable system spans 6,900 kilometres. Extra connectivity extending to Angola and South Africa occurred within the Phase2 of the venture.
In 2015, the corporate began operations of MDXi, mentioned to be Nigeria’s largest Tier III Knowledge Heart, and prolonged a submarine cable from Lagos to Cameroon.
Operations and unprecedented glitch
MainOne is within the enterprise of offering telecommunication companies and provides wholesale broadband companies by means of a system of cable networks and fiber optic infrastructures.
With its companies acclaimed to come back at truthful prices, MainOne Cable has in its clientele, telecommunication operators and suppliers, governments, giant enterprises, and colleges throughout 10 West African international locations.
The corporate claims that its resolution to supply its companies at charges which might be lower than the present worldwide bandwidth costs within the area is to encourage native content material improvement through expertise switch of crucial networking applied sciences and job creation, with the placement of the community operational middle (NOC) in Nigeria.
Principal Road Applied sciences can be backed by influential buyers such because the Africa Finance Company, the Pan-African Infrastructure Growth Fund (PAIDF), and a few Nigerian banks.
In 2018, the corporate recorded a 74-minute glitch throughout a community improve that brought about some Google world visitors to be misrouted by means of China. This short-term disruption attracted rapid reactions from critics, however the firm assured that stringent processes had been put in place to stop a repeat of such outage sooner or later. To its credit score, there was no different document of such.
Financials
In an interview with Nairametrics in 2017, Opeke stated that the corporate was but to achieve profitability, however was making strategic investments that might repay sooner or later. Nevertheless, with the final publicly obtainable assertion being that of 2014, there isn’t a strategy to verify what stage of progress has been made within the final 6 years.
The 2014 financial statement was audited by KPMG Skilled Companies on the time when Babatunde Dada was nonetheless CFO. The report confirmed progressive progress within the firm’s fortunes from 2011 to 2014. Nevertheless, all the firm’s bills went up, regardless of the varied price optimization packages applied.
Revenue earlier than tax grew from N146.eight million in 2013 to N189.6 million in 2014, whereas complete income grew from N1.1 billion in 2013 to N1.7 billion in 2014.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and different incidents additionally took their toll on the corporate’s funds. In the course of the firm’s 10 years celebration lately, Opeke pointed out that the price of the corporate’s companies had develop into barely costly attributable to energy challenges and the forex volatility within the nation.
Nevertheless, she mentioned that the corporate was working in the direction of deploying smarter insurance policies to additional realise its imaginative and prescient. She additionally famous that the corporate was within the technique of winding down its overseas debt obligations and growing publicity to Naira loans, to defend itself from the affect of the fluctuating alternate charges, since its prospects paid for companies in naira.
Administration
A decade after its institution, Opeke nonetheless runs MainOne Cable because the Chief Govt Officer, whereas Anil Verma serves because the Chief Technical Officer.
Others are:
Solanke Abimbola, Chief Finance Officer; Tinuola Ipadeola, Head of Company Companies and Growth; Gbenga Adegbiji, Chief Operations Officer MDXi; Abayomi Adebanjo, Normal Counsel; and Olawale Fayose, Firm Secretary.
Heading the Board of Administrators is Fola Adeola as Chairman, whereas Dapo Oshinusi, Taiwo Okeowo, Bennedikter Molokwu, Harmless Ike, Souleymane Keita, Banji Fehintola, Sipho Makhubela, George Olaka, Sandeep Fakun, and Praveen Beeharry, are all Administrators.
With this calibre of skills and seasoned professionals on its administration staff, the thriller shrouding its financials turns into worrisome.
Recognitions
The over $400 million infrastructural investments in West Africa have made noticeable impacts throughout the financial system and earned MainOne quite a few recognitions and awards.
In 2019, MainOne was awarded the Datacloud Africa Award for Excellence in Knowledge Heart (Africa) and Africa Cloud Service Supplier of the 12 months, Nigeria Enterprise Management Award for Connectivity and Knowledge Centre Service Supplier of the 12 months, and BoICT Award for Greatest Tier III Knowledge Centre in Nigeria – MDXi.
Others are NTITA Telecoms Wholesale Supplier of the 12 months (2017), Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Trade Award for Excellence in Broadband Infrastructure (2016), Frost & Sullivan Greatest Practices winner for the Nigerian Knowledge Heart Buyer Worth Leaderships Award (2014), Ghana Telecoms Awards: Telecom Wholesale Service of the 12 months (2013), and Nigerian Telecoms Awards: Broadband Firm of the 12 months (2011), African Telecom Corridor of fame – Greatest Telecoms venture of the yr (2010), amongst others.
Backside line
Apart from performing according to the brand new NCC coverage, the Administration of MainOne should do one thing about making the monetary stories obtainable to the general public. Not solely will this fulfill stakeholders’ curiosity, however it is going to additionally hold and potential buyers abreast with the progress made thus far and assist them decide the place help is required.
— to nairametrics.com
The post MainOne Cable: A decade-old journey to bridging the digital divide in West Africa appeared first on Correct Success.
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