Excerpt:
When Roshan, a cellular-phone company jointly owned by the Geneva-based Aga Khan Development Network, Monaco Telecom and MCT Corp. of the U.S., began building a network in Afghanistan in 2002, transmission equipment languished in customs for months, says Roshan CEO Karim Khoja, because the company refused to pay bribes. Leases on prime land were also lost, and bureaucrats demanded free airtime and SIM cards, says Khoja.
Yet Khoja adds that it’s certainly possible to operate a clean business and succeed in Afghanistan. Roshan is the largest carrier in the country. It has a million customers, a market share of about 60% and generated revenues of $100 million in its 2005 fiscal year. But to get there, Roshan had to make plenty of adjustments. Afghanistan has no functioning mail system or credit-card services, so billing methods prevalent in the West couldn’t be used. Instead, customers get airtime by purchasing prepaid calling cards from roughly 4,000 vendors who are Roshan franchisees. In Kabul, the vendors, most of them selling cards on the street, earn about $100 a month, much more than most laborers. “We are creating an entrepreneurial middle class,” says Khoja. Roshan is also helping to entertain the masses by sponsoring one of Afghanistan’s most popular TV shows, a knockoff of American Idol called Afghan Star, which follows aspiring celebrities as they perform for a national audience. Viewers vote for their favorites by sending messages via their mobile phones. The revenue generated by the additional traffic is split between Roshan and programmer Tolo TV.
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He may be right. One thing is for sure: the nation’s yearning for a better future has never been more intense. Just ask Khan as he waits in line to open his account at Azizi Bank: “The economy is moving forward. Afghans are hungry. We are tired of war and we want to buy. We want to build. But I hope there is no more fighting—if that happens it will destroy everything.”
Ismailimail 