Since it's the first time you being interviewed by Forbes Global Magazine and in order to better understand your present activities, would you please give our readers a brief historical background of Gamtel?
GAMTEL is a liability limited company, set up on 1st of April 1984 in which the government holds 99%. The remaining 1% is owned by an insurance company called The Gambia National Insurance Company, GNIC.
The uniqueness about GAMTEL despite having its majority shares held by the government it is run on strictly commercial lines, meaning that even if the government owns 99% of the company, it has to pay for its usage of the telecommunication facilities. Because of that, government policies have made GAMTEL to be one of the most successful and valuable telecommunications company in sub-Sahara and Africa.
As you may know, the readers of Forbes Global, which are mainly businessmen, are always curious to see how companies are doing. Would you please provide us with some financial figures of your company like turn over, net profit, number of employees?
If you look at GAMTEL's past activities, from 1984 to today, GAMTEL has gone through three important development phases. The first phase of development was in 1986; the second one was in 1989 and the last one in 1992-1993. Now, if you look at the trend for these development phases, the customer base in 1984 was only 2000. By 1986, that was raised to about 10 000. In 1989, it was pushed to 20 000. By 1993, we had around 28 000 customers and today there are around 32 000.
The turn over in 1986 was near 100 million Dalasis. Today, our turn over is around 230 million Dalasis. The last declared profit, last year, was 34 million Dalasis, which is about $2,8 to 3 million US net profit and after paying dividends to the shareholders.
GAMTEL has been very comfortable financially speaking and is one of the key-enterprises in the country. In the minister's last budget speech, GAMTEL's activities were mentioned as representing over 30% of the GNP.
In order to prepare the next step of its expansion, GAMTEL appeals to foreign private sector capital for a partial flotation of the company. Would you please tell us what are the latest developments regarding the partial flotation of GAMTEL, your targets in terms of date and your expectations regarding the privatisation of your company?
In order to increase its development, GAMTEL may not have the full resources to raise the necessary capital. As a result of this, the government is trying to put in place legal and regulatory tariffs. A framework, which has to go to cabinet and be sanctioned by the parliament to ensure that the telecommunication sector is regulated in a level playing field.
That process will indeed take effect by the very early part of the year 2001. That will set the government ready for any eventual flotation of GAMTEL shares or inviting strategic partners to come and form alliance with GAMTEL in order to move the telecommunications sector for a faster development and because of the capital injection that we will expect from the partners.
For sure, co-operation is the key word for successful project development. Could you explain how you establish partnerships?
Partnerships are definitely come from processes, which are sometimes aided by the World Bank.
If in case we want a strategic partnership, the government which owns 99% of the shares will probably decide to get rid of 50% of their shares. Or we may do it on a gradual basis: government will reduce its shareholding in GAMTEL by 20% and will go up to 30%, then to 50%. I think it is better to do it cautiously.
GAMTEL is a very important asset -one of the most valuable- for the government. That is why the government will have to privatise with a lot of professionalism to ensure that at the end of the day, that privatisation will benefit to the government and the people of The Gambia. The Senegalese experience, in partnership with France Telecom, is a very good example. And in that legal aspect of managing that partnership, I am convinced that the telecommunication sub-sector will always be headed by a Senegalese. This is a very strong view I have. The profitability of the telecom entities is due to local people. In that process, my advice to private investors is: do not marginalize the local people to be able to manage an investment in Africa. It is those people, local people, who can guard and protect your interests even if you are not there.
Recently, GAMTEL has planned to implement the GSM mobile phone. Could you give us more details about this concrete project and its present stage of realisation?
Concerning the GSM we made a request for quotations considering both bidders for the technical and financial side. I am glad to say that the contract went to ALCATEL. Hopefully, by the year 2001, very early in January, The Gambia also will have a GSM system.
In order to be competitive, a company has always to provide customers with better services. What is your investment policy in terms of upgrading the network and services?
We claim to provide a very high standard of services. When you look at the telecommunications indicators in the sub-region, GAMTEL is not behind, we are in the forefront. The way we assure customer service provision is due to the topology of the network. We are blessed with the fiber optic cable, which stretches from West to the Eastern part of the country, and soon through the entire country. This cable, which is a high capacity cable, ensures that no matter how far you are from the capital, you will have the same quality of telecommunication services across the country. I think that policy of trying to put The Gambia on a strong backbone communication link has actually to be managed year after year. One day, hopefully, the whole of The Gambia will be surrounded by fiber optic cables. We have done the southern part of the country, which is already linked from west to east. The next program is to install the fiber optic on the north bank of the river to come all the way back inside the country. We hope that program in three years time will be accomplished. The Gambia will have soon its information super-highway on a high fiber optic cable capacity.
| Is this infrastructure development part of an ongoing project you have called "Universal access"?
If GAMTEL is able to put a fiber optic cable around The Gambia, the access universally becomes very cheap. The Gambia is a small country, the villages are very closed to each other, and if the fiber is on the both sides of the river, we can easily make that universal service obligation a reality for the customers. So the villagers will only have to cover a walking distance to access a telephone service.
Are you working on a partnership for the extension of the network?
We have already started working on a memorandum of understanding with ALCATEL to see how the network extension could be achieved in the next two years by increasing the customer base from 20 000 to 50 000 lines. The impact on the rural areas is going to be based on an appropriate technology to ensure that the most people can have the telephone service for an affordable price. That strategy was signed yesterday, hopefully we will be able to implement it very early in the year 2001. The first phase will increase the customer base by 15 000 lines. The next phase by the same amount.
Would you please give us an overview of the other ongoing projects?
The other very important project is Internet. The Gambia started with Internet services in 1989 through the UNDP African Internet Initiative, when African countries were assisted to provide backbone access to the Internet. So today, we have a good Internet service in The Gambia with two providers, which are QUANTUM and GAMTEL.
GAMTEL's strategy, now, is to see how best we are able to spray the usage of internet and its applications from urban to rural areas and make it also affordable and how best we can push internet into the country by creating internet cafes that people could easily access for a cheap price.
According to you, GAMTEL's future growth depends on the Internet?
It is in that field. We have are actually treating Internet as a co-activity of GAMTEL, because, sooner or later, fixed telephone use is going to decrease. It will be replaced by the Internet and Data services. With this trend of voice over Internet coming, the traditional telephone usage definitely can be very much affected. We are looking at Internet very seriously as a part of our co-activity to ensure that we push its usage in the country as much as possible and into the classrooms as well. This is our first priority. We have to make sure that we have Internet in all the schools in The Gambia. We started with the senior secondary schools and next year we are going to the middle schools and eventually into the private schools.
What kind of help will you receive in order to implement that plan properly? Are there some private partners involved in that?
GAMTEL cannot do all this alone. We do expect a lot of government help. GAMTEL's main responsibility is the provision of the infrastructure. I want to insure that any school in any part of the country will have the access to an Internet connection. In the next two years, I will bring Internet through telephone lines into the classrooms of the country. Then, it is up to them to provide the computers, possibly with private sector help. This is a very big task for GAMTEL, because sometimes provision of those services or even to provide the extension of the telephone lines is not economical. In fact, we are looking at other benefits rather than counting how much money we are spending.
Is it also a goal for GAMTEL to decrease the price of the telecommunications?
No. The telecommunication tariffs are going down. GAMTEL should not be sensitive to that despite the monopolistic nature of the service in the country. We are very much aware about the tariffs, which internationally are going down. The only thing I can assure is that GAMTEL tariffs will not go up!
Finally, as you seem to be very much involved in your job, I would like to know what is your main achievement since you are managing director of GAMTEL.
GAMTEL is like a baby born in my arms. I brought it where it is today, and at this stage, GAMTEL is a healthy man.
Another big achievement GAMTEL made is to ensure that broadcasting is brought to ordinary Gambians. A few years ago, you were lucky if you could even to listen to Radio Gambia beyond fifty kilometres. Today Radio Gambia is available all over the country, thanks to GAMTEL. GAMTEL introduced the first television signals in the country thanks to the immense directive of the government. Mr. President Jammeh said "I want a television in this country in one year". Even if I told him that one-year was too ambitious and that we could start the first year with the urban areas before to spend a second year of implementation for the rural areas, he answered that he wanted it done in one phase. It was a colossal investment for GAMTEL but we went through the president's directives, and now the television is useful to the country.
We did not invest only in our co-activities. We invested 1,16 Million Dalasis in four years in broadcasting because it was a very important tool for the government to create. Gambians are now very well informed thanks to the radio and television. These are really very laudable achievements for GAMTEL.
Do you have a final message to our readers who are potential investors in The Gambia?
Gambia, because of its very strategic location -we use to call it the "Singapore of West Africa"- could become the supermarket of West Africa. The port is well developed, we have a wonderful airport, telecommunications infrastructures are better than in most African countries, the taxation, the bureaucracy are less stringent compared to other African countries.
If you get the right support and the good material to invest in The Gambia, consider that you do not target the Gambian market only but also the market around The Gambia is easily accessible. This is a very important opportunity for investors. Even for GAMTEL, I see no reason why GAMTEL could not form any alliance to really have a close network of neighbouring countries to drive the telecommunication infrastructures forward, especially in Internet and Data services. Hopefully, sooner or later, with the free-zones authority established, The Gambia will become a major attraction for investors. |
Gambia Telecommunications Company Ltd