Airtel Africa Directs Majority of $1.1 Billion CAPEX at Spectrum and Fibre
Airtel Africa is directing the majority of its $1.1 billion 2026 capital expenditure programme toward spectrum acquisition and fibre rollout across its African footprint. Separately, Airtel Africa's CEO has made a public call for industry-wide infrastructure sharing as a mechanism to reduce network build costs across the continent.
Infrastructure sharing: Airtel's CEO just admitted the duplicated-fibre problem is industry-wide
500 fibre cuts a week. $1.1 billion to spend. And a CEO pointing out that Airtel and its rivals are literally burying cable in the same ground at the same time.
Taldar's logic is simple: if two operators each lay 1,000 kilometres of fibre along the same corridor, that's 1,000 kilometres wasted — which could instead extend coverage to somewhere that has none.
The uncomfortable thing is that every operator knows this, and competition has historically stopped them acting on it. The Airtel-MTN tower and fibre-sharing deal in Nigeria and Uganda, announced last year, is the first serious test of whether rivals can actually share infrastructure without killing each other commercially.
If that model holds, $1.1 billion goes considerably further than it otherwise would. If it doesn't, Africa keeps paying twice to connect half the continent.
2 sources
- Airtel Africa CEO calls for industry-wide infrastructure sharing to cut costs · technext24.com · T2
- Airtel Africa bets major share of $1.1bn CAPEX on spectrum acquisition and fibre rollout in 2026 · technext24.com · T2