Atlantique sees mobile growth in W.Africa

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - West African mobile operator, Atlantique Telecom aims to increase its customer base by up to 20 percent annually, its managing director said on Wednesday.

Atlantique Telecom is 82 percent owned by the UAE's Emirates Telecommunications Corp (Etisalat) and operates in Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Gabon, Togo and the Ivory Coast and has a total of 4.2 million subscribers.

"We have 4.2 million and we hope to increase that by 15 to 20 percent each year," Ahmed Cisse, managing director of Atlantique told Reuters on the sidelines of an African telecoms conference.

"We are looking at a total of more than $400 million capex in 2010, up maybe 5 percent (from the previous year)," Cisse said.

The spending increase comes despite tight operating conditions due to a global economic downturn, he said.

Atlantique sees the Ivory Coast as the company's main market with around half of its subcriber base drawn from the West African country.

Cisse said Atlantique was keen to cement its presence in West Africa and had a strategy to become "at least" the No.2 operator in the countries it was present in.

"We are currently number two or three, depending on what country we are in, and we do have a strategy to be at least number two wherever we are in the next five years, with the help of Etisalat," he said.