Re: Dont Sell Telkom Kenya to Foreigners please ........ SignPetition online

On 7/10/07, *Mike Theuri* wrote:

TKL is being sold for pennies on the dollar, unfortunately this is a phenomenon that keeps repeating itself over and over again with telecom licencing in Kenya. Investors in several other Africa countries pay hundreds of millions of dollars to secure licences but in Kenya it appears to be ok to sell a 15 year term licence for $50m and 6-7 years down the road the companies are making annual profits in the hundreds of millions that major western corporations would envy. In this particular case, TKL is being sold with its basket of licences which alone should cost hundreds of millions of dollars more, its exclusivity as a existing and the only current nationwide provider should also factor in.

Interestingly enough the paltry valuation of TKL at $205m is a slap in the face and an affront to taxpayers who have a stake in TKL by virtue of it being a government owned entity, not forgetting the TKL owned infrastructure that is already in place. Not factored into the equation seems to be the undersea cable which TKL has a key stake in. The sale of TKL to foreigners should not take place as a matter of key national security and interest. Countries such as Canada and the US have well established laws that state that their telecom companies should not be foreign controlled because they understand the implications this has on their sovereignty and interests.

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In 1999 in part : 24 September 1999 Africa Confidential Vol 40, No, 19

"If the politicians prevail on CCK over the cellular licence, more questions will be raised about the sell-off of the state's land-based telephone network, Telkom Kenya. Continuing delays in its sale due to political interference have lost the government over $300 mn. in revenues, according to industry sources. Kenya's telecommunications sector was valued at some $1.2 billion in 1997 by Rothschilds, the government's then financial advisors on the privatisation, but would be unlikely to fetch much more than $800 mn."