Smile Telecoms Holdings Ltd receives $51m in funding to boost operations

• Fund will enhance telecoms giants operations in its respective markets
• Receives debt restructuring plan approval from lenders

Wale Ameen

Online Editor

Pan African telecommunications group, Smile Telecoms Holdings Ltd has announced the receipt of a fresh boost in funding from its majority shareholder, Al Nahla. This comes along with a shift of its debt repayment plan due date.

The telecom giant which has operations in Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo announced that its Restructuring Plan has been approved by its lenders.

With the new agreement, Smile Telecoms will receive an injection of $51m in funding to enhance its operations in the respective markets in which it operates and further energize its operations and support efforts towards achieving better performance as well as a delay till March 2022 before its debt repayment kicks in.

The company had earlier in February announced a change in the composition of its board following the retirement of Ms. Irene Charnley and Mr. Mohammed Wajih Sharbatly from the Group and all boards of the operating companies which took effect on January 1st 2021.

Ms. Irene Charnley who is the founder of Smile had from her position  as Deputy Chairman of the Smile Telecoms Limited Board while Mr. Mohammad Wajih Sharbatly who is a Co-Founder retired from his position as Co-Chairman of the Group.

To further strengthen the group, Mr. Osman Sultan who had been the founding CEO of EITC (du) in the UAE was appointed as Vice Chairman of the Group while Mr. Albert Momdijian was appointed as Board Member and Chairman of the Group’s Audit Committee.

Smile Telecoms was founded in 2007 with head office in England and operations in Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as South Africa.

It has one of the largest sub-1 GHz 4G LTE commercial networks in Africa, operating in the “future proof’ low band, 800 MHz band, and mid-band.

Smile was the first to launch VoLTE on its network and continued its innovation, introducing SmileVoice, a free mobile app.

Its signature SmileVoice enables customers with any Android or Apple iPhone device (including those which are not VoLTE-enabled) to make SuperClear voice calls over Smile’s 4G LTE network. It was also the first to introduce an Unlimited offering, which enables SuperFast data and SuperClear voice, all on one bundle.