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Orange, the French telecoms giant, announced today that it has officially launched its brand in Burkina Faso. The launch comes eight months after the Paris-based company completed the 100 percent acquisition of Bharti Airtel’s operations in the West African country.

“It is a great honour for the Orange group to inaugurate its presence in Burkina Faso at a time when the country is resolutely engaged in a vast economic development programme,” said Bruno Mettling, Deputy CEO of the Orange Group and Chairman/CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa region. “The arrival of the Orange brand testifies to our commitment to providing the benefits of the digital ecosystem to the entire population of Burkina Faso.”

With the launch of its brand, Orange said it would pursue the expansion of its mobile money platform – Orange Money – and its 3.75G mobile Internet network. The company also said it expects that Orange Money will be further expanded across the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA).

Orange Burkina Faso is the second largest mobile operator in the country with 6.3 million customers. Telmob (ONATEL), which is majority-owned by Maroc Telecom, is the largest operator.

“Today, customers in Burkina Faso are more demanding and the way they use digital services has evolved; we are at a decisive turning point in the development of the telecoms market,” said Ben Cheick Haidara, CEO of Orange in Burkina Faso. “Our ambition is to continue the work accomplished in recent years in the mobile money and mobile Internet fields to make Orange the leading partner for Burkina Faso’s digital transformation.”

Orange is one of the world’s leading telecoms firms with a total customer base of 236 million customers worldwide, including 194 million mobile customers and 18 million fixed broadband customers in about 28 countries.

For the past two years, Orange has been on an acquisition spree in Africa’s fast growing telecoms market as part of a strategy to boost revenue given the saturated and static markets in Europe – the company’s home continent. The French telecoms giant has so far expanded its African operations to over 20 countries, including Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mali, Tunisia, Kenya, Egypt, etc.