UK communications services provider BT Group is eyeing expansion in Kenya and Ghana while ramping up its African headquartered operations in South Africa.

On Thursday, BT announced a renewed phase of investments into Asia Pacific, Turkey, the Middle East and Africa (AMEA) in a bid to accelerate its expansion in high growth markets.

BT plans to hire over 400 staff with 300 set to be recruited in markets including the likes of China, Indonesia and South Africa over the next three years.

More specifically, the firm aims to recruit 30 people in South Africa, including five industry experts and four professional services consultants.

Currently, BT employs 170 people in South Africa and between 15 to 20 in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, said Keith Matthews (pictured), the company’s general manager for sub-Saharan Africa, at a media briefing held at BT’s Johannesburg showcase centre.

“We’ll be expanding our presence in sub-Saharan Africa, and we’re looking indeed at Ghana and Kenya as our next steps,” said Kevin Taylor -- president for BT Asia, the Middle East and Africa -- who was speaking from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Meanwhile, Matthews said that South Africa is planned to be used as a “springboard” for BT into the rest of Africa.

“We do have capability on the ground. We have people in Nigeria; we have people in Kenya. We also have people in Ghana,” Matthews said.

“At the moment the focus has really been on southern Africa. We have contracts and delivery capability in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, but servicing existing contracts (in these countries).

“So, we haven’t built up a sales capability yet in those areas. So, we’re selling in a sense from here (South Africa) because a lot of the companies that we’re talking to are talking about sort of leapfrogging from southern into western, eastern, central Africa.

“The model that we’ve kind of adopted is we’ll continue to work with our main base here (South Africa) and as the customer demand grows, so we’ll put more people on the ground,” Matthews said.

Other updates on BT’s business in Africa include that work has been completed on the FibreCo South African terrestrial fibre network, which stretches 12,000km and connects cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town.

BT Group is a key anchor tenant of the long-haul network, which is planned to use an open access model.

Matthews explained that the FibreCo network was handed over at the end of last month in terms of its physical completion and that it is expected to go live end of December 2013.

BT Group also plans to sell-on capacity of the parts of the fibre it owns.

Meanwhile, BT Group’s chief executive officer Gavin Patterson said that about 50% of his company’s revenues are generated outside of the UK while the company plans to invest $6 million in its global services per year.