Last week, it was announced that the world’s biggest mobile phone group (by revenue), Vodafone may soon be venturing into the Nigerian telecoms market as it sees a lot of potentials in Africa’s most populous nation.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Annual Technology, Media and Telecoms Conference in Barcelona, Spain, Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said Vodafone might be interested in expanding into the Nigeria market, noting that “it doesn’t take a very sophisticated analysis to see it is one of the very few large markets with decent GDP, a young population and the classic conditions for being interesting for Vodafone.”

Vodafone has expanded its operations tremendously across emerging markets in the past two years with acquisitions in Turkey, India, South Africa and Ghana to make up for slower growth in Europe. Vodafone, announced earlier this month that it would take control of South Africa’s largest telecoms company, Vodacom Group.

Vodafone said at the time that the Vodacom identity would remain visible on the African continent and that it would be the exclusive investment vehicle through which Vodafone would make acquisitions in sub-Saharan Africa.

What Vodafone’s Presence Could Mean for Nigeria

If Vodafone makes its presence in Nigeria, it could change the Nigeria telecoms industry and thus open up exciting investment and competitive opportunities in Nigeria. It would also be interesting to see which Nigerian telecoms company would be bought by Vodafone.

At the moment, the Nigeria telecoms market is booming with several operators like MTN, Zain (formerly Celtel), Globacom, Starcomms, Visafone, Multilinks Telkom, Zoom Mobile (formerly Reltel Wireless), Etisalat amongst others. 

Perhaps, Vodafone might be interested in Visafone (not just cos of the similarities with the name) but particularly because Visafone as one of the newest entrants into the Nigeria telecoms industry has displayed outstanding potentials since launch in February 2008. The company was awarded the Best Telecoms Brand at the Telecoms Award last August.

But whatever happens, it will surely shape the telecoms landscape in Nigeria and thus re-define the future of mobile industry in Nigeria.