AFRICA – Lebanese Power and telecommunications firm, IPT has secured a total of US$110 million to finance the development of mobile network infrastructure in Africa and Middle East.
A press release from IPT revealed that the financing for its projects in Africa and Middle East was made possible by loans from various European Financial institutions.
The release revealed that DEG- Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, a German development finance is going to finance part of the projects with a US$25 million long term loan.
IPT also secured US$20 million and US$10 Million from EDFI member institutions, Proparco and Finnfund which will be syndicated by DEG.
A huge chunk of the financing however came from the European Investment Bank (EIB), which is has committed to investing a further US$ 60 million.
IPT specialises in supplying power to the telecommunication towers and currently operates more than 30,000 towers from different providers in 11 countries in Africa and the Middle East.
According to IPT, mobile telecommunication is part and parcel of everyday life.
However, in many developing countries, telecommunication towers are not connected to the public power grid but are supplied directly with electricity, usually from diesel generators.
IPT has a mission of making power generation for telecommunication towers more efficient and more sustainable, using solar power and state-of-the-art storage media.
It will for instance install batteries on site which will store excess power so that green energy is available and can be used at any time of the day.
IPT looks forward to saving 40% of the total energy currently being used to power telecommunication masts while at the same time reducing the amount of CO2 emissions by about 115,000 tons per year.
To achieve this goal, IPT plans to take over a large part of the energy systems from the mobile network operators, modernize them and sell the electricity back to the mobile network operators on the basis of long-term supply agreements.
Currently, IPT operates 4,500 telecommunication towers according to the TESCO (Telecom Energy Service Company) model and has plans to use the funding from European partners to add a further 1,000 towers.
The firm currently employs 4,500 people, with 2,000 further direct and indirect jobs being created or secured as a result of the forthcoming investment.
