According to a report by the Daily News, following its recent nomination as Tanzania’s Most Respected Company of 2009, the moblie phone operator, Zain Tanzania, was recently presented with the prestigious award at a gala dinner that was held in Nairobi and was given to the managing director of Zain Tanzania, Khaled Muhtadi, by the senior partner for PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Leonard Mususa.
The award was given based on the results of a survey that was recently conducted by PWC, an auditing firm, and involved 400 CEO’s across the East African region.
This year’s award ceremony marks the 10th anniversary of the survey, which is organized by PWC and carried out by Synovate (formerly Steadman Group), an independent research firm.
“We are excited with such recognition as the number one company in the country. We are honored by the recognition given to us by the corporate leaders across East Africa,” said Mr. Muhtadi at the ceremony, “This prestigious award is testimony to the positive impact that we are making on our customers, community, telecom industry and Tanzania’s economy.”
Prior to the event, Mr. Muhtadi had already promised the firm’s customers that the company would work to improve the delivery of its services.
“In a market of cut throat competition, which has more than seven mobile operators, it is not a small feat to become a number one company,” he said at the gala.
According to the Daily News report, Mr. Muhtadi was also recently quoted as having said that his company is expecting to see the amount of customers that it serves increase over the next few months.
“We see 5.2 million customers by the end of this year, up from 4.8 million currently, and aim to reach 6.0 million at the end of next year,” he said.
Official statistics that were reported by the Daily News indicate that the Tanzania telecommunications sector grew by 20.5 percent last year, which is a slight increase from the 20.1 percent growth in 2007.
Based on these statistics, the Tanzania telecommunications sector currently represents one of the fastest growing sectors in the country.
Zain Tanzania, a unit of Kuwait’s Zain, currently retains a 36 percent market share, which is relatively similar to the market shares that are retained by its primary competitor, Vodacom Tanzania, a unit of the South African company that is mutually owned by Telkom and Britain’s Vodafone.
In addition to these two firms, other mobile firms that are currently operating in the country include Zantel, a unit of Emirates Telecommunications Corp, and Tigo, a unit of Millicom.
The award ceremony in Nairobi named the second and third most respective companies in Tanzania as Vodacom and Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL) respectively.
In addition to these awards, Safaricom was also named as the overall winner in East Africa for the third year in a row.
Kenya Airways, the award’s 2005 and 2006 overall winner, came in second and MTN, a pan-African mobile phone operator, came in third.
In general, mobile operators in East Africa had the most success at the awards ceremony, taking the top awards in all of the available five categories: one overall and four country awards.
