Mr Le Dang Dung, Deputy General Director of the military-run Viettel Group, said that Africa is a "strategic market" for Viettel. The group started promoting investment in Mozambique in 2008, got licensed in November 2012, and went into operation in May 2012. As of May 2013, with 2 million users, its Movitel grossed US$113.5 million of revenue. Currently, Movitel has 1,726 employees, including more than 1,400 Mozambican people. After half a year of operation, in November 2012, Movitel was awarded the prize “Company with best solutions for telecom improvement in African countryside.” Mozambique is the most successful overseas market of Viettel.
Before setting foot in Mozambique, Viettel had invested in Laos, Cambodia and Haiti, from which the group had gained a lot of experience in overseas investment. Mozambique was the first market in Africa where Viettel chose to invest. With a natural area of 799,380 square kilometres and a population of 23.4 million, Mozambique is a poor country in southeast Africa where the telecom industry lagged behind other countries in the region. Viettel Group entered Mozambique market with Movitel joint venture, which aimed at low-income users. Not only focusing on cities and high-income users as its competitors, Movitel has extended its service coverage to everyone with social programmes like free internet services for schools and service charge support for users to enable rural users to have access to telecom services and make them customers. With this strategy, Movitel has signed up 80 percent of new subscribers in Mozambique and created more than 20,000 jobs for rural people. Millions of teachers and students have access to telecom services through free Internet programmes for 4,200 schools nationwide. Nearly 70 percent of Mozambique's telecom infrastructure has been built by Movitel. Thus, 30 percent of communes in Mozambique have access to cellular service for the first time. Telecom infrastructure density in Mozambique doubled and the telecom service coverage in rural areas doubled from 35 percent to 70 percent. Mozambique became one of the top three Sub-Saharan countries for modern telecommunications infrastructure, together with Nigeria and South Africa. With this infrastructure, the telecommunications industry of Mozambique is totally ready for deployment of advanced management tools such as e-government and development of ICT applications in health, education and economic development.
In 2012, Movitel was awarded the prize “Company with best solutions for telecom improvement in African countryside.” Nearly one year earlier, Movitel also received a similar award from AfricaCom Organisation. With two of the most prestigious international awards in Africa in just one year, the telecom industry of Mozambique has been recorded on the world telecommunications map.
Since it made its presence in Mozambique, Movitel is compared to a bridge for Viettel Group to reach other African countries. In the future, Africa will be a potential market for Viettel, which is nourishing many ambitious plans. Confidently, when Movitel is successful in a country like Mozambique, Viettel will make a greater success on the fast-developing continent with more than 1 billion people.
Mr Dung said Vietnamese companies lack information about African countries and businesses and they face a lot of difficulty in setting up business cooperation with this market. But, this cannot be a reason for Vietnamese companies to drop this potential market. If Vietnamese companies are determined to conquer this market, Viettel is always willing and ready to share a hand.
Vietnamese
