Pan-Middle East and African mobile giant MTN is looking to buy a majority stake in Kenya’s fourth-placed mobile operator, Econet Wireless Kenya, for US$450 million, notes Reuters, citing a report in Kenya’s The Standard newspaper. Johannesburg-based MTN is reportedly looking to acquire the 70 percent stake in the Kenyan operator owned by Econet Wireless International (EWI), also headquartered in South Africa. Neither company could be reached for comment, but the report notes that MTN has been looking to enter Kenya – East Africa’s largest economy – for some time. The Standard said that MTN sent a letter of intent to EWI a few months ago and has since been in touch with the Kenyan government on the issue.

Econet Wireless only launched in Kenya in late 2008 but claims to have signed-up 200,000 subscribers by February this year and is aiming for 1 million by the middle of 2009. The market is dominated by Safaricom, 40-percent owned by Vodafone, which had an estimated 13.1 million subscribers at the end of last year, almost a 79 percent share of the market. Kuwait-owned Zain is the second-placed operator, while France Telecom’s Orange is another relatively new entrant, launching in September 2008. According to Wireless Intelligence data, MTN had over 90.7 million mobile connections across 22 markets by year-end, its largest in Nigeria (23 million), South Africa (17.2 million) and Iran (16 million). Click here to view Wireless Intelligence’s recent ‘Snapshot’ analysis on Kenya.