BT group targets EMEA region for expansion

CALIFORNIA, USA: Britain's BT Group expected to double its connections in Africa and the Middle East to 6,000 by 2016, a senior executive said on Thursday.

The global telecommunications group, with counts miner Anglo American, consumer products giant Unilever, and mobile company MTN among its clients in the two regions, saw Saudi Arabia, the UAE, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya as the key engines of growth.

"Because of the potential of Africa... if you ask me where we will be in 10 years time, we see big, big numbers," Olivier Campenon, president for the EMEA region, told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum for Africa conference.

"Our projection is to roughly double our size in the next three to five years. We have roughly 3,000 connections today in Africa and Middle East and the plan is to double that," he said.

Campenon said the company would continue to invest in Africa and the Middle East, although regulatory certainty and political stability was important