Zain and Ooredoo complete first closing of $2.2bn MENA tower venture

Zain Group and Ooredoo Group have pooled 4,000 towers in Kuwait and Qatar, closing the first phase of a joint venture that the operators valued at $2.2 billion when they announced it in 2023.

The platform operates under equal ownership. Each parent holds a 50 percent stake. Zain contributed the passive infrastructure of Zain Kuwait, while Ooredoo brought in the towers of Ooredoo Qatar. The companies framed the first closing as the operational start of what they pitched two years ago as the largest tower company in the MENA region.

For tower watchers, the numbers matter. The initial announcement, made jointly with UAE-based TASC Towers, targeted a combined portfolio of nearly 30,000 towers across Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Tunisia, Iraq and Algeria. The current platform holds 4,000, roughly 13 percent of that ambition, which means the venture's economics still depend heavily on the subsequent closings.

What changes for the operators?

The stated logic is conventional towerco arithmetic: greater scale, capital efficiency and a dedicated operating model focused on passive telecoms infrastructure, separated from the retail and service businesses of both parents. In practice, Zain and Ooredoo gain a vehicle that can monetise steel and land while leasing back capacity under long-term contracts, freeing balance-sheet room for spectrum and network investment.

The companies also positioned the platform as an infrastructure option for third-party operators, pointing to opportunities for carriers across the region to access passive infrastructure in a more capital-efficient manner while supporting regional digital infrastructure build-out. That is a vendor-side claim at this stage; no anchor tenants beyond the two parents were named.

Zain CEO Bader Al-Kharafi tied the closing to strategy rather than short-term gain. The first closing, he said, "reflects our shared strategy of creating focused, scalable and sustainable platforms."

Ooredoo counterpart Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo cast the deal as one element in a broader infrastructure push. Ooredoo is "now executing across every digital infrastructure segment identified in our strategy as we continue building a leading regional portfolio," he said.

What comes next?

The remaining towers from the original six-market plan — spanning Jordan, Tunisia, Iraq and Algeria, plus any additional Kuwaiti and Qatari assets — will be "integrated progressively into the platform," according to the companies' statement. Each tranche remains subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals in the relevant jurisdictions, which in this region typically means separate competition and foreign-investment clearances market by market.

That approval sequence explains the phased structure. Rather than waiting for all six regulators, the partners closed on their two home markets first, where clearance risk was lowest and asset control simplest, and left the cross-border transfers to follow.

The 2023 valuation of $2.2 billion covered the full combined entity, not just the 4,000 towers now transferred, so the figure stands as a target-state number until the Jordanian, Tunisian, Iraqi and Algerian portfolios land. For operators and towercos tracking MENA infrastructure, the signal is that carrier-driven tower consolidation in the Gulf remains on track, with the pace now set by regulators rather than by deal intent.