The CEO of Kuwait’s Zain has confimed to local media that the operator is in talks with three firms regarding the planned sale of its African mobile operations, reports Reuters. Dr Al Barrak told Kuwait daily newspaper Al-Rai that one of the interested parties was from India and that Zain was considering selling all or part of its African operations. Zain said last month it was reviewing a possible sale of its African networks (minus Morocco and Sudan) after initial talks with French media conglomerate Vivendi were called off. “We have received expression of interest from several parties/other operators to acquire Zain operations in Africa,” Dr Al Barrak noted at the time.

Following Vivendi’s withdrawal from the process a number of other firms have been linked to a deal, most notably Orange-owner France Telecom and Zain’s rival operator group in the Middle East, the UAE-based Etisalat. According to Reuters today, Etisalat has said it is interested in taking a majority stake in Zain at a group level. However, Prime Holdings analyst Sleiman Aboulhosn said that Etisalat may be content to simply cherry pick some of Zain’s assets in the region in order to avoid regulatory problems: “Etisalat cannot buy the ones that co-exist with its own assets, for example in Nigeria… So they might be interested in some parts.” Click here for Wireless Intelligence’s recent ‘Snapshot’ analysis on the sale of Zain’s African mobile networks.