Zain Nigeria gets new chief

The board of Zain Nigeria has appointed Alain Sainte-Marie as its new chief executive officer (CEO), states All Africa.com.

Sainte-Marie has replaced Bayo Ligali who, according to the board of directors, has moved on to pursue other interests after a three-year stint as CEO of the telecommunications company.

Prior to his appointment as CEO of Zain Nigeria, Sainte-Marie, who has over 24 years of working experience in IT business, was the managing director of Zain Gabon, a position he took up in March this year.

The African mobile market has seen 25% growth with 74 million new subscribers, according to research by Blycroft Publishing, says TMCnet.

Research analysts at the firm claim the African mobile market grew to 370 million mobile subscribers as of the fourth quarter of 2008, a 25% market size increase from the previous year.

The company says 11 new networks, which include Zain in Ghana and Orange in Niger and Uganda, accounted for 2.5 million subscribers; which means 70 million other subscribers came from the economic growth and proliferation of networks within Africa.

Telkom Kenya's Orange mobile phone service has registered 1.38 million users and expects more than two million by the end of this year, reports Reuters.

Majority owned by France Telecom, the firm is eyeing a 20% market share of the east African nation's mobile users market.

Telkom has a combined 1.8 million subscriber base for its various services including a fixed-line network, in a country where the telecoms sector is dominated by mobile phone firm Safaricom.