Africa’s big three mobile operators, MTN, Vodacom and Airtel, are reaching out to partners, governments and vendors, to expedite mobile rollouts and upgrades across the continent against a challenging financial backdrop. Both the cost of infrastructure deployment and of the services for consumers have impeded rollout and take-up, with a variety of schemes being employed at both ends. On the consumer side, pay-as-you-go has long been an established model, often with bundling of financial services for cross-subsidization of packages, along with buy-now-pay-later offers for devices. On the network front, the big three have been engaging in partnerships with local or external telcos, to build coverage more quickly, upgrade to 4G, or even start deploying 5G in urban locations. Vodacom has…