Today, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, the company that has the lion’s share of the mobile telephony & broadband business in Zimbabwe, announced at a press briefing their annual financial results the period ending February 2013.
The festive season once again saw a bumpThe festive season once again saw a bumper rise in Econet subscribers with the company reporting that it has crossed the 8-million level for the first time, supported by the recent introduction of Buddie Zone. Econet Wireless Commercial Director Mr George Barbaressos confirmed the new figures, saying the demand for Econet lines remains “very, very strong”.er rise in Econet subscribers with the company reporting that it has crossed the 8-million level for the first time, supported by the recent introduction of Buddie Zone.
Zimbabwe’s largest supermarket chain, OK Zimbabwe Limited, has become the first major retailer to be connected to EcoCash, Econet Wireless’ mobile money service. OK has assumed an EcoCash “Super-Agent” status, and will be performing agent services for EcoCash throughout its branches across the country. Under this partnership, every OK outlet will now register customers for EcoCash and also perform cashing in and cashing out functions for EcoCash.
It’s been a great year for us. It has.
Traffic for the site more than continues upwards. The visitor engagement on the site, one of the things we value most here, increased significantly. With the help of some selfless individuals, Techzim answers is delivering locally relevant tech answers much better than it did a year ago. We delivered some great events. Some directly, and some in partnership with some amazing people and organisations.
Veteran American telecoms executive Dr James Patrick Myers has been appointed the new Non-Executive Chairman of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe to replace Tawanda Nyambirai, who stepped down this week. Dr Myers is a retired former Vice President for Africa of South Western Bell, now part of AT&T, the world’s largest telecoms company by value. He also served as the President of Southwestern Bell International Development Africa (Pty) Ltd from 1985 to 1998 and also served as its Executive Vice President from 1994 to 1995.
When we attended the EcoCash tour yesterday, two developments at the company stood out: A new hire, former Safaricom executive Japhet Aritho (Head of M-PESA Product Development and Operations) has joined the EcoCash team as Chief Operating Officer of Econet Services. And yes, Econet Services. The company that we had not heard about before yesterday [...]
This year, again, BarCamp Zimbabwe and the ZOL Jumpstart Challenge were a success. A big success. While BarCamp was held at the same venue as last year, we decided to take it outside and what a refreshing atmosphere full of networking, learning, mobile talk, gadget talk, discussions about mPayments, cloud computing, social media and everything that we [...]
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe has issued a public notice that the company will terminate mobile network interconnection services to the state owned mobile operator NetOne today, 23 August 2012. The notice, which was published in Zimbabwe’s print press today, cites the repudiation of their interconnection agreement by NetOne as the reason. As you may be aware, [...]
Today, the Econet CEO, Douglas appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Media, Information and Communication Technology on ICT. The appearance was for discussion on various issues ranging from tariffs, infrastructure sharing, future investment in telecoms and network rollout amoung other issues. We (and now you) have been lucky enough to receive a detailed report in [...]
Econet Wireless recently announced Zimbabwe as the first commercial site for its highly acclaimed solar powered ‘Home Power Station’ (HPS), this according to a report on the mobile phone company’s website. The announcement is welcome news in a country characterised by chronic load shedding and power failures. Econet’s Corporate Communications Manager Ranga Mberi confirmed to [...]
Econet has started an advertising campaign for the introduction of merchant services on the EcoCash mobile money transfer system. The adverts, which started appearance recently in Zimbabwe’s newspapers, indicate that the additional services will be launched very soon. Here’s some of text appearing in the adverts: Very soon you’ll be able to: Pay your kombi [...]
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe has today announced through a press statement the completion of agreements for funding totalling US $307 from multiple financiers among which are Chinese, European and African institutions. The long list of financiers includes China Development Bank, Ericsson (Sweden), Industrial Development Corporation (South Africa), Afreximbank (African), PTA Bank (Africa), TN Bank (Zimbabwe), CBZ (Zimbabwe), DEG [...]
The Ecolife case, now a thorn in Econet’s side, is not over yet. The main headline on the Herald front page today reads “Econet bosses face arrest”. The story basically says Trustco is mad that Econet is ‘getting away with murder’ and they are seeking, through the courts, to have Econet chairman Tawanda Nyambirai, deputy FD Roy Chimanikire and CEO & director Douglas Mboweni jailed for 90 days.
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, the country’s largest telecoms firm, announced today its full year financial results for the period ended February 2012. An update posted by Bloomberg the company’s annual profit after tax has risen 18% from US $140.9m last year to $165.7 million this year.
Here’s a summary of other announcements made at the briefing today:
According to statistics published by zoomsphere, a social media analytics platform ,Africa has 5 772 194 registered users on LinkedIn. The information is as of February 27 2012 and digs into each African country’s most active companies by members and activity. Zimbabwe is understood to have 103 400 registered members, making it the 11th biggest Linkedin user base in Africa. The top twenty countries on the continent are as follows: