Bharti Airtel Limited today announced an agreement for the divestment of over 3,500 telecom towers from its African operations to Eaton Towers. Airtel will sell and lease back towers in 6 countries across its African operations under a 10-year contract.

In July, Bharti Airtel has signed an agreement with Helios Towers Africa, a firm owned by a consortium of investors, to sell towers across four countries in Africa.

The agreements will allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, enable it to deleverage through debt reduction. It will also significantly reduce its on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure.

For Eaton Towers, the acquisition is a major step towards the scale needed to provide shared telecoms infrastructure solutions, with its customers benefiting from lower operating costs, expanded network coverage and capacity and improved quality of service.

The agreements are subject to statutory and regulatory approvals in the respective countries.

Commenting on the development, Manoj Kohli, Chairman, Bharti Airtel International Netherlands BV (BAIN), said: “The agreement with Eaton Towers will lead to far superior utilisation of passive infrastructure and help drive the proliferation of affordable mobile services across Africa.”

Alan Harper, CEO of Eaton Towers added: “This is a transformational deal which gives Eaton Towers the most diversified tower portfolio across Africa. ”