One of Nigeria’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Tizeti, has declared to pay its shareholders a dividend of 0.03 kobo per share to its shareholders for the financial year ended December 2023.
The company disclosed this on Monday via a statement published on its website, where it announced 5 years of profit run. The company, however, did not disclose the amount of profit it recorded in the year under review.
Tizeti announced its first dividend payout in 2022 for the 2021 financial year. At that time, the company paid a dividend of N2 per share, which made the 2023 payout significantly lower.
Tough period
Commenting on the company’s dividend payment, the founder and CEO of Tizeti, Kendall Ananyi, said the 2023 dividend is significant because the company paying this during the toughest period for internet service providers and telecommunications companies in Africa.
Despite the tough operating environment, he said the company continued its expansions throughout Nigeria and across three key regions in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.
- The company, which secured an undisclosed amount in debt financing from Chapel Hill Denham’s Nigeria Infrastructure Debt Fund (NIDF) last October, said it has now deployed nearly 200 towers operational across West Africa.
- This, it said helped the company to boost its capacity to deliver over 180TB of internet data daily, a testament to its impact in bridging digital divides and stimulating socio-economic development.
- Tizeti also delivered 35219 TB as of December 2023, amidst industry challenges, underscoring its resilience and demand potential, according to its statement.
Impact of funding
With the funding released last year, Tizeti said it had the biggest rollout, and possibly the biggest rollout plan by any internet service provider rollout in 2023.
“We took our first major debt facility, to expand our operations, and sent teams out into new states in Nigeria, and Cote d’Ivoire, to set up offices.
“We expanded our partnerships with global technology companies, Microsoft and Eutelsat OneWeb, won new partnerships with USAID, participated in international conferences, and expanded our leadership team, with an equal gender balance,” the company said in its review of 2023 performance,” the company stated.
Tizeti said it was able to new states to its coverage to provide 21 million underserved Nigerians access to reliable internet, to enhance connectivity.
What you should know
Nigeria is currently implementing a National Broadband Plan (NBP 2020-2025) with a target of achieving 70% broadband penetration by 2025. While the race toward realizing this target has been slow as broadband penetration in Nigeria still stood at 43% as of March this year.
ISPs like Tizeti are expected to help in achieving this target. However, several challenges such as the high cost of Right of Way charges and multiple taxation have slowed down infrastructure expansion.
This prompted the Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani to announce a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the delivery of an additional 90,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cable across the country.
The announcement followed approval of the project by the Federal Executive Council (FEC). Tijani said the SPV would build the additional fibre optic coverage required to take Nigeria’s connectivity backbone to a minimum of 125,000km, from the current coverage of about 35,000km.
