Talks: Airtel in talks to buy Telkom Kenya

Customers at a Telkom Shop at Village Market. [Photo: WILBERFORCE OKWIRI]

India’s Bharti Airtel is in talks to buy Telkom Kenya, the country’s smallest telecoms operator, to create a stronger challenger to market leader Safaricom, three industry sources told Reuters yesterday.

London-based Helios Investment, which owns a 60 per cent stake in Telkom, is looking to partly cash out of the investment which it entered in 2015, the sources said.

Airtel, currently Kenya’s second-biggest telecoms operator, declined to comment. Telkom was not immediately available to comment.

The move comes after the two held merger talks last year, only for them to abandon the plan.