Benin invites applications for third MNO licence, but SBIN expected to win
May 5th 2021
Benin’s Ministry of Digital & Digitalisation (Ministere du Numerique et de la Digitalisation – MND) has launched a tender to license a new mobile network operator (MNO), open to foreign companies with existing telecoms network operations. Applicants must have the required technical and financial resources and not be directly or indirectly controlled by an existing licensee. Applications are due by 18 May 2021, subject to a non-refundable XOF5 million (USD9,100) fee.
The tender was authorised by a Council of Ministers decision of 24 March 2021, with an invitation for applications dated 26 April 2021 subsequently published on the website of the Authority for Regulation of Electronic Communications & Post (l’Autorite de Regulation des Communications Electroniques et de la Poste, ARCEP).
Benin’s MNO market is currently a duopoly of private sector operators MTN and Moov, while state-owned Beninese Digital Infrastructure Company (Societe Beninoise d’Infrastructures Numeriques, SBIN) has been earmarked by the government as a third MNO, with Senegal-based Sonatel chosen as SBIN’s management company in March 2021 under a remit to make SBIN ‘a major GSM operator’ over five years. The Council of Ministers decision (24 March) which delegated SBIN’s management to Sonatel also authorised the MND to ‘initiate the opening of a procedure for granting a third licence for mobile electronic communications networks for the benefit of the SBIN’.
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