Nigerian Firm, Pan African Towers (PAT) has signed a $20 million infrastructure investment with Watt Renewable Corporation a Canadian Firm. The Canadian firm will leverage on this to bring alternative energy solutions (SOLAR) to PAT owned towers in Nigeria. The partnership will also impact greatly by ensuring quality voice and data service in the country, considering unstable power supply is a challenge to telecoms operators in Nigeria. PAT manages about 1,000 towers in Nigeria, and it will be doubled by the end of the year. According to PAT CEO the firm also has footprints in Ghana.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of PAT, Wole Abu, “it is a milestone in our journey of innovation, service delivery, and pushing Nigeria to the broadband target. This is at the forefront of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC’s) agenda for setting up Infrastructure Company.” He also said the unstable power supply “is taking a huge chunk of money from the operators. So, there is a need to act fast before we have issues. PAT and Watt Renewable Corporation deal will gladly address some of these lapses.”
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PAT Financial Controller, Seun Fajebe said, “it means as PAT, we need not invest in power facilities at the site by ourselves; we have a technical partner, who handles all that to ensure that there is power at all time. Before now, those sites run on conventional power, but with the new deal, we now have alternative power supply including solar energy, back up batteries, and the conventional power as a third layer, making it three in one. With this new move, the probability of the sites going down has been completely checked.”
The Chief Executive Officer of Watt Renewable Oluwole Eweje, said the partnership is infrastructure based, and that they plan to aid PAT cut expenses on electricity generation by half. “We have been working on this project since last year before we concluded recently. It is a $20 million (7.2 billion naira) deal. It is a long term project. We have got some international investors on this for us. In the first phase, about 45 sites will be rolled out; we are targeting growing organically in the country”.
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