Cases & Deals

International Finance Corporation coordinates with Ethiopian government to award telecommunications license

Client(s) International Finance Corporation (IFC)

Jones Day assisted the International Finance Corporation and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in opening up Ethiopia's electronic communications market to competition, which until now held the world's largest monopoly in the telecommunications sector.

The 18-month process ended with the granting of a license of US$850 million to the "Global Partnership for Ethiopia", a consortium made up of the Kenyan Safaricom, the British Vodafone Group and CDC Group, the South African Vodacom Group, and the Japanese Sumitomo Corporation. Over the next 10 years, the consortium is considering investing more than US$8 billion in new electronic communications infrastructure.