Vodacom Business Africa, the enterprise arm of South African telecoms group Vodacom, has revealed that Nigeria and Zambia are its biggest markets.

Vodacom Business serves the enterprise business customer, offering products such as connectivity, MPLS services, VSAT services, and broadband wireless access services on the continent.

Speaking to ITWeb Africa Vodacom Business Africa's group managing director Douglas Craigie-Stevenson said they have nine operating entities across the continent, but the West African and Southern African nations represent their biggest markets.

VSAT is one of the major services we offer across the continent, which can connect anywhere there is a satellite footprint, said Craigie-Stevenson.

"Your customer today is no longer asking to be connected; he is asking to be connected with a service level attached to it.

"The managed service component of your connectivity layer is where we differentiate ourselves in the market," he stated.

According to Craigie-Stevenson the biggest sectors they provide services to in the regions where they operate include oil and gas, as well as financial services.

Engaging Africa's biggest oil exporter

Nigeria is one of Africa's most populous nations with more than 173 million people.

According to the World Bank the West African country is the biggest oil exporter in Africa, with the largest natural gas reserves on the continent.

Meanwhile, landlocked country Zambia has a population of more than 14 million people and its economy is largely driven by copper investments, the World Bank has noted.

Commenting on doing business in Africa, Craigie-Stevenson said their customers are asking for connectivity in multiple countries, and are going in with a bullish approach to the continent.

Vuyani Jarana, chief officer for Vodacom Business reiterated Craigie-Stevenson's comments and said Africa has vast and largely untapped growth potential.

"Many global enterprises based in the US, Europe and Asia are focusing on expanding their operations into Africa to establish a presence. As a result, Vodacom Business is seeing a huge demand for connectivity services. These enterprises generally prefer to deal with a single supplier, and Vodacom Business is perfectly positioned to meet this need," said Jarana.

According to Craigie-Stevenson, "Nigeria is the dominant market in Africa... but there has been a little bit of a slowdown in investment, but that country's gross domestic product growth rate is still above 5%, which is still substantially high."

"To say that the private sector does not see opportunity would be incorrect," he told ITWeb Africa.

Challenges of doing business in Africa

Craigie-Stevenson also noted that there are challenges in operating in big African markets especially in terms of regulatory frameworks.

"Some of the traditional issues include logistical problems, and power supply is probably the number one issue in almost all of the markets."

"Your network can't operate without power, so the power generation the deeper you go into territories becomes problematic especially for financial services companies," he said.

In the last financial year Vodacom Business generated R10 billion in revenue and accounted for 17% of Vodacom group's service revenue.