Employees across Bharti Airtel's Africa operations may be facing a tough few months if the company goes ahead with rumoured plans to reduce its workforce. The Economic Times of India last week quoted anonymous sources who spoke of large scale job losses, up to 20% of Bharti Airtel staff.

The company announced its results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2015 this week and reported revenue growth of just 1% in Africa to $989 000 000 compared to $980 000 000 in the corresponding quarter of last year. Data revenues contributed 12.9% to overall Africa revenues.

The quarterly customer base figures on the other hand showed 2.7% growth in the number of African customers between March and June 2015.

Christian de Faria, MD and CEO of Bharti Airtel Africa, said, "In the first quarter, Airtel Africa has set the pace for the year, with customer base growing by 13.4% to 78.3 million. Customer churn has been reduced from 7.0% to 5.4%, as a result of customer lifecycle management programmes. Minutes grew by 16.0%, while data volumes have more than doubled.The data customer penetration at 16.6% reflects the untapped potential in the internet space. I am particularly delighted to report that 7.0 million Airtel Money customers are transacting more than $ 1 billion of money every month. We are also satisfied with continued profitable growth in Nigeria"

The quarterly report also confirms interest by French telecommunications operator Orange in acquiring Airtel operations in Burkina Faso, Congo Brazzaville, Sierra Leone and Chad.

Bharti Airtel describes that transaction as one that is about maximizing shareholder value by handing over the businesses to an operator who it says is committed to take the agenda in those countries forward.

Further debt reduction appears to be on the cards, although the telecommunications company does not hint at job cuts directly.

The quarterly revenue reported went on to say that the restructuring would allow Airtel "...to establish a sharper focus on the remaining countries, further reduce the debt on its balance sheet and move faster towards building a profitable business in Africa."