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Helios Towers: Connecting Africa, One Cell Tower at a Time | Tom Greenwood on 13th and Park
Description
Tom Greenwood, CEO of Helios Towers, joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for a wide-ranging conversation on Africa's digital transformation and the critical role cell tower infrastructure plays in connecting hundreds of millions of people to the global economy. Greenwood, the fourth employee of a company that now operates more than 15,000 towers across eight African countries and Oman, traces Helios Towers' origins to the post-financial-crisis moment when the company's founders, including Chuck Green, who had previously built Crown Castle in the US, saw an unparalleled opportunity to bring the tower-sharing business model to a continent on the verge of explosive growth.
Greenwood breaks down the infrastructure gap that existed across Africa when Helios Towers launched around 2009 and 2010, and how the company has since helped drive connectivity from 2G through to early 5G deployment. He explains why Africa, though roughly five to eight years behind the rest of the world technologically, represents one of the clearest growth opportunities anywhere on earth: a population set to double over the next 30 to 40 years, a massive gap between broadband availability and actual internet usage, and a post-COVID behavioral shift that has dramatically accelerated data consumption across the continent.
The conversation turns to geopolitics and investment strategy as Greenwood addresses China's decades-long head start in African infrastructure investment and makes a direct case for why American capital and diplomatic engagement need to be far more coordinated and present on the continent. He draws a parallel between modern connectivity infrastructure and the soft diplomacy once practiced through Voice of America and the BBC World Service, arguing that Africa's scale and trajectory make engagement not just a commercial opportunity but a national security imperative. Greenwood also shares a personal story from Tanzania, where a newly connected village allowed one of his employees to video call her newborn baby with a grandmother who had never had cellular access before, illustrating the human stakes behind every tower Helios builds.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:35 Soccer, Tottenham, and QPR
2:02 How Helios Towers Started
4:26 Africa's Young Population and Digital Gap
6:50 Cell Towers as Critical Infrastructure
8:07 Inside a Cell Tower
10:24 The DRC: 3,000 Towers and Growing
13:11 Connectivity Changing Lives
13:53 China, America, and the Race for Africa
17:01 Soft Power and Diplomacy
18:50 Building in New Communities
20:41 Purpose Behind the Work
21:38 Closing
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