Senegal's Sonatel mulls secondary listing

West Africa's biggest listed company Sonatel is considering a secondary listing to promote the liquidity of its shares, the Senegalese telecom company's chief financial officer said on Monday.

"Our investors want us to have a secondary listing ... We are studying how to do that," Aboubacar Sadikh Diop told Reuters in an interview, but declined to give any timeline or the location of the listing.

Diop also said the company was looking for acquisitions in neighbouring countries.

"We are still studying, looking for new targets, but our growth does not depend only on new targets," Diop told Reuters on the sidelines of an investor conference in Johannesburg.

But the company would not bid for Niger's state telecoms company Sonitel because its 40 percent owner France Telcom already operates in the west African country, he said.

Niger has said it is seeking a new buyer for its state telecoms company Sonitel after an accord with the Libyan company LAP Green foundered on UN sanctions against the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

Dakar-based Sonatel is the dominant telecom firm in Senegal and Mali and has a market value of about $2.5 billion, making it the biggest firm on the west African stock exchange.

Sonatel, which also operates in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, provides fixed-line, mobile and internet services in west Africa. It has been pushing to keep down costs to combat rising competition in some of its markets.

Analysts say mobile Internet has huge potential in Africa, given that most people on the continent still lack access to computers.

Emerging markets telecoms research firm Delta Partners said at the start of this year it expected non-voice revenue in Africa, including short messaging services, to hit $10 billion by 2014, from about $5 billion currently.