This is Part 4 (and the final part) of our Four Part series covering Airtel’s FY26 Results. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
If you had told an African telco executive in 2015 that within a decade, MTN, Vodacom and Airtel would be openly sharing fibre networks and tower infrastructure, they would have laughed. These companies have spent two decades fighting each other for spectrum, customers and market share.
Buried in Airtel Africa’s FY26 results released on Friday is the quiet evidence that something has fundamentally changed. In just twelve months, Airtel signed three major infrastructure-sharing partnerships and two satellite deals that, taken together, mark a structural shift in how African telecommunications actually works.
For Kenyan readers, this matters more than it looks at first glance.
The deals, in order
March 2025: Airtel and MTN announced network infrastructure sharing in Uganda and Nigeria. These are MTN’s two largest markets and two of Airtel’s most strategically important. Sharing means tower sites and fibre routes, the most expensive infrastructure either company owns. Both companies confirmed they are exploring similar arrangements in Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda and Zambia.
May 2025: A first deal with SpaceX, bringing Starlink broadband connectivity to Airtel customers in enterprise, schools and health centres across rural Africa.
August 2025: A strategic infrastructure-sharing agreement with Vodacom Group covering Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, plus access to international bandwidth in Mozambique. The deal initially focuses on fibre networks and tower infrastructure, with both operators citing the cost of duplicate 5G rollouts as the driver.
December 2025: A second SpaceX deal, this time bringing Starlink Direct-to-Cell satellite connectivity to standard smartphones across all 14 of Airtel’s African markets. We covered the Direct-to-Cell announcement when it landed, and the implications for Kenya specifically were significant even then.
Five major partnerships in twelve months. Three of them with companies that, in any other context, are direct competitors.
Why the economics flipped
The logic is simple, and it has been building for a while. Building a national telecommunications network is expensive. Building one across 14 countries, as Airtel does, is staggeringly expensive. Building 5G specifically, which requires denser site grids and far more fibre backhaul than 4G ever did, has pushed those costs into territory no single operator can comfortably absorb.
Diesel pressure is making this worse. As we noted in our headline coverage of Airtel’s FY26 numbers, CEO Sunil Taldar warned that energy costs from the Iran-Israel-United States conflict will pressure margins in the near term. African telcos run thousands of base stations on diesel because grid power is unreliable. When fuel costs rise, the cost of running a duplicate parallel network becomes unsustainable fast.
The maths has shifted. Instead of every operator building duplicate towers down the same rural road, two operators agree to share one tower. Instead of laying parallel fibre routes, they trench once and lease capacity to each other. The cost savings flow straight to operating margins.
Airtel CEO Taldar made this point explicitly in the FY26 commentary. Cost efficiency is one of the group’s six strategic pillars, and infrastructure sharing is the lever that delivers it at scale.
What this means for Kenya specifically
This is where the picture gets interesting for Kenyan readers, and it has not been getting enough attention.
Vodacom is one of the parties in the Airtel sharing agreement signed in August 2025. Vodacom is also, as of Parliament’s approval at the end of FY26, about to become the controlling shareholder of Safaricom, holding 55% after buying 15% from the Kenyan government and 5% from Vodafone Group. Effective 1 April 2026, pending Central Bank of Kenya and Competition Authority approval.
So the same multinational telco group is now the controlling shareholder of Safaricom Kenya and an infrastructure-sharing partner of Airtel Africa in Tanzania, DRC and Mozambique. That has not yet translated into anything operational in Kenya. But it sets up a structural backdrop that did not exist before. In future, if Vodacom decides shared infrastructure is a continent-wide priority, the conversation about whether Safaricom and Airtel ever cooperate on towers in Kenya stops being theoretical.
For now, Safaricom and Airtel remain hard competitors in Kenya. As we noted in Part 3 of our coverage, Airtel is now openly attacking Safaricom on home broadband pricing, both on 5G fixed wireless and on its newly launched Xstream Fibre product. The intent is to win, not to share.
But the satellite angle changes the calculus too. By partnering with Starlink for Direct-to-Cell coverage, Airtel has effectively outsourced the rural-coverage problem that has historically been Safaricom’s biggest competitive moat in Kenya. Without spending billions on rural towers, Airtel can now plausibly claim to reach the same Kenyan terrain Safaricom does. Whether that promise holds up in practice remains to be seen, but the strategic intent is unambiguous.
What competition looks like now
A reasonable question: if telcos are sharing infrastructure, are they still competing?
The answer is yes, but the competition has moved. Pipes are becoming a shared utility. The actual battle is now about what runs over those pipes. That includes brand strength, retail distribution, customer service quality, app ecosystems, and most importantly fintech.
Airtel Africa added 660,000 mobile money agents and 130,000 activating retail outlets in FY26. The myAirtel app saw a 74% jump in transacting users. Airtel Money’s annualised total processed value crossed $215 billion in Q4’26. None of that depends on whether the tower at the end of the road is shared with MTN or Vodacom. All of it depends on Airtel’s ability to acquire, retain and monetise customers through services that sit on top of the network.
In Kenya, this dynamic is already obvious. Airtel has grown its mobile money market share past 10% while M-Pesa’s share has fallen below 90% for the first time. The fight is no longer about whose tower is taller. It is about whose app is in your pocket and which mobile money agent is closest to your home.
Where this is heading
Three things to watch.
First, whether Airtel and MTN extend their sharing agreement into more markets. The companies have already named Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda and Zambia as candidates. None of those is Kenya, but each successful extension reduces the cost of someone proposing the same arrangement here.
Second, what Vodacom does with its new Safaricom stake. Once the deal closes, expect strategic-review activity inside Safaricom that may eventually include conversations the company has historically refused to have, including network-sharing economics.
Third, whether the regulator gets involved. Kenya is unusual because Safaricom is so dominant that it has historically had little incentive to share. But as the Communications Authority continues to push for fixed broadband market reform and lower mobile money fees, it is not unreasonable to expect regulatory pressure to play a role in any future infrastructure conversation.
The era of every African telco building its own everything is ending. The era of shared pipes and competition on services has already begun. And in Kenya, with Vodacom about to take control of Safaricom, the rules of engagement are quietly being rewritten in real time.
