Understanding Business: Airtel Africa's Core Functions and Environment

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of Airtel Africa, a leading telecommunications provider in Africa. It delves into the company's core functions, including voice services, mobile data, value-added services, and mobile money, highlighting their significance in achieving its mission. The essay further examines the importance of these core functions in maintaining inter-relationships with the external environment, focusing on marketing and media planning, decision-making, and the role of technology. It also applies PESTLE and Porter's Five Forces analyses to assess the broader environmental strategies and competitive landscape, ultimately concluding that Airtel Africa is well-positioned to manage these forces. The essay emphasizes the importance of adapting to external changes and making informed decisions to ensure the company's continued success.

Running Head: UNDERSTANDING BUSINESS 0
Understanding Business

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Assessment 1 Essay
Introduction
Airtel Africa is one of the organizations which are listed on the London Stock Exchange
FTSE 250 index. It operates in 14 African (mainly in East, Central and West Africa)
countries under the legal and commercial name ‘Airtel Africa PLC’. It is the leading provider
of telecommunications service, recently it crossed 100 million active subscribers and now
ranks the second-largest mobile operators in Africa. Airtel Africa company incorporated as a
private limited in 2018 on 12 July by UK shares and re-registered in 2019 on 13 June as a
public company limited with the registered office which is in England and Wales with a
registration number (Osabutey & Okoro, 2015). In this essay, the core functions of Airtel
Africa and their importance in maintaining the inter-relationship with the external
environment will be discussed. It provides a large array of services in Virtual Wallet, Voice
and Data field, that can be specified as mobile internet, messaging, prepaid and post-paid
connections, voicemail, and Airtel Money. Airtel group aims to enhance the lives of
customers by transforming the digital services and user experience.
Core functions of Airtel Africa
Core functions are the cluster of products, services and activities to achieve the results or
mission. A core function might parallel to a business line in the private organizations and it is
linked to performance efforts and planning with the budget. Decision-makers can change in
funding distributions through organizations as they can view drifts in a budget of core
function. Airtel Africa is the leading telecommunication services provider in the 14 African
countries, listed as Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Gabon,
Seychelles, Tanzania, Niger, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Zambia. In these
countries, Airtel Africa secures the rank of number one or two in providing mobile services to

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millions of customers (Olokoyo, 2019). It is the subsidiary company of Bharti Airtel, an India
based telecommunication organization, which is recognized as the second-largest
telecommunications service provider in all over the world, by the customer base.
The core functions of Airtel Africa mainly include virtual wallet and telecommunication
services such as voice service, data service, value-added and mobile money services. The
largest factor of income of the Airtel Africa is mobile voice business which is 62.2 per cent at
the end of the year of 2019, 31 March and 66.4 per cent in the year of 2018, 31 March. The
mobile data corporation of Airtel Africa combined the revenue of 22.2 per cent at the end of
the year 2019, 31 March and 18.9 per cent in the year 2018, 31 March. The organisation in
the services of Airtel Money which are available within the footprints of Airtel Group serves
14.2 million consumers (Nair & Emozozo, 2018). By these services of airtel money, voice
and data, Airtel Africa is creating a world which is digitally connected and devoted to
establishing lives of the consumers easier. Its aim is to provide an instinctive and simple
consumer experience in the telecommunications with the updated views of the consumer. The
core functions of Airtel Africa can be defined as:
Voice services: These services include wired and wireless, pre-paid and post-paid voice
connections to varied customers among African countries (Njoh, 2018). These services
enable people to connect with their family members or friends via mobile and fixed devices.
62 per cent of the revenue of Airtel Africa solely depends on voice services. So, to enhance
the reach of voice services among the people of African countries, Airtel Africa is
continuously working towards making voice plans affordable, thus providing active customer
support to solve the technical voice issues of the users.
Mobile data: These services comprise of the internet communication via 2G, 3G, and mainly
4G in the African countries (Njikam, et al., 2019). Airtel Africa is mainly enhancing their 4G
services in the African region and aims to connect people with the world of web. It will help

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people to get digital and avail services over the internet. Airtel Africa generates a revenue of
around 22 per cent from mobile data services.
Value-Added Services: These include an array of services that allow people to get alerts
regarding various events, such as Job Alerts, Weather alerts, News alerts, Hello tunes (to set
the caller tune), Airtel radio, Jokes, Missed call alert, and Voice Search and requests (Lupo &
Delbari, 2018).
Mobile money: Airtel Africa has introduced digital wallet services in the name of Airtel
Money. These services are available twenty-four hours seven days and allow users to transfer
money to their friends and family members. A user can also do mobile recharge via Airtel
Money, pay utility bills, pay for a movie or song (Mehndiratta, 2019). Airtel Africa has 14.2
million active users.
Importance of core functions in the context of Airtel Africa current inter-relationship
with its external environment.
Inter-relationship is the interaction within or outside of the organization among two or more
people or parts of an organization (Ibrahim, et al., 2018). It often explains business success or
failure, so, it is important to understand the running process of inter-relationship. On the other
hand, external environment comprises all the factors that stand outside the boundary of a firm
and have an influence on the survival and growth of it. An organization needs to control or
regularly monitor and adjust the external changes as the response whether it is reactive or
proactive leads to a substantially different result (Ansoff, et al., 2018). Success, development
strategy, scale and vision of a business is depending on its environment, and knowledge of
the issues related to them, can help the leaders to arrange them. It is necessary to know the
positive and negative impacts of the factors, inside or outside the firm so the leaders can
produce the strategies which are suitable to handle different situations whether it is

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predictable or unpredictable. Importance of the core functions of Airtel Africa inter-
relationship with the external environment:
Marketing and Media Planning
Planning is the process of highlighting the important steps that Airtel Africa and its marketing
and sales management has to take to increase the growth of the company in African countries
(Fox & Bakhoum, 2019). These steps include publishing more online and physical
advertisements in a particular nation or a specific area where chances of growth are
favourable, increasing the potential and functioning of customer service, announcing offers
for new customers, and analysing the success of a telecommunication service by
understanding the interest of the buyers. The pre-planning will help Airtel Africa in
expanding the outreach in the market by acquiring new users, that will eventually increase its
subscribers base in Africa.
Decision making
It includes the process of making the right decisions by identifying and analysing the
reasonable steps that can be taken to ensure the growth of Airtel Africa. This step can be
made intact by utilizing the relevant information, taking inputs from the senior management,
and analysing the impact of the decisions on the end-users. By taking effective decisions,
Airtel Africa can enhance its telecommunications operations as per the competitive
environment (Ahmed, et al., 2018). These decisions may include the launch of new services
in the field of fixed and mobile telecommunications, reducing the price of voice and data
plans to manipulate the competition from rivals.
Technology

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In the telecommunications field, technology plays a major role in enabling seamless services
to the end-users; it generally consists of the type of equipment used to provide voice, data,
and customer support services (Sutherland, 2018). Therefore, it’s required that employees
should have good knowledge of how the technology works and should also have field
experience of how various software programs and tools work. Technology can be a
distinguishing factor in advancing the competition. Like by expanding mobile data services
with 4G technology, Airtel Africa has significantly improved the data services and has gained
the interest of mobile users. In addition, this year 5G services will be launched in African
countries, Airtel can connect with the next-gen buyers and strengthen the customer base.
Pestle Analysis and Porter’s Five Forces Analysis
Airtel Africa can evaluate the strategies of the broader environment and examine the
opportunities and threats of the forces like political, legal, environmental, economic and
social, to update the decision-making and planning by the Pestle analysis. The political
environment can affect Airtel Africa as Britain chosen to quit Europe which can cause
political chaos also Brexit created uncertainty in the financial market which can affect the
economy of the company. In the social environment, the youth and ageing population of the
UK can affect the outcomes of the company as so many people using mobile at present and
there are so many telecommunication sources available there. Company has legal threat as in
the UK it is not easy now to get enrolled for the establishment of the new firm in the new
places, and legislation forces the company for ‘automatic enrolment’. Porter’s Five Forces
review the five rival powers that are very essential and mould every organization by
determining the strengths and the weaknesses of it (Hague, 2019). Airtel Africa can use
Porter’s model to identify the structure of the organization to determine the strategy and can
apply it on the economic segments of the firm to recognise the profitability. Airtel Africa can

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face the threat of alternative services and products available in the UK market and also can be
affected by the entry of new competitors. Strength of competitive rivalry in mobile is very
high in the UK for Airtel Africa. Bargaining power of buyers is high and of suppliers is low
which can affect the production of the company at an extreme level. Airtel Africa is one of
the best telecommunication company in all over the world and still very productive, and the
services it provides are very useful for the people so they prefer it most. From the past
strategic plans adopted by the company and with the current scenario, one can conclude
easily that the company can cope up with the Pestle and Porter’s forces with grace.
Conclusion
It is concluded that core functions are the collection of services and activities to achieve the
results or mission. A core function might parallel to a business line in the private
organizations and it is linked to performance efforts and planning with a budget. The core
functions of Airtel Africa mainly include virtual wallet and telecommunication services such
as voice service, data service, value-added and mobile money services. By these services,
Airtel Africa is creating a world which is digitally connected and devoted to forming lives of
the consumers easier. It is stated in the essay that the organization aims to provide an
instinctive and simple consumer experience in the telecommunications with the updated
views of the consumer. An organization needs to control or regularly monitor and adjust the
external changes as the response whether it is reactive or proactive leads to a substantially
different result. It is provided that the company can cope up with the Pestle and Porter’s
forces with its past and current strategy planning.

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