In the world of technology sales, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) is often treated like one big team. A single scoreboard, a shared set of KPIs, and, ideally, one unified approach to quotas, same manager. But the experiences of the salespeople on the ground are usually different. Anyone who’s spent time selling across the region knows the secret: while Middle Eastern clients will answer “target questions” with some level of clarity, the African client has a knack for making even the simplest inquiries feel like an ordeal to test the faith of the saints. Budgets are less clear, priorities keep shifting, minds that matter keep changing, and what went out expecting a straightforward “yes or no” often comes back as a story, a negotiation, or a challenge. Or all three.
From a distance, the Middle East and Africa can appear strikingly similar to technology vendors and sales leaders. Both regions present numerous opportunities for greenfield rollouts in telecom and digital infrastructure. Legacy constraints are thinner than in Europe or North America, spectrum is often available, and there is genuine room to leapfrog directly into cloud-native networks, AI-native smart architectures. The similarities quickly dissolve though.
From the outset, it is important to recognize that neither region is a monolith. Both the Middle East and Africa comprise many diverse countries, each at its own unique stage of economic development, regulatory maturity, and infrastructure readiness, shaped by local political, cultural, and market conditions. The broad trends described below are not absolute rules to be applied across the board, and successful sales strategies ultimately depend on deep local understanding rather than regional generalization.
The realities of revenue concentration play out interestingly. In the Middle East, it is entirely possible for a salesperson to achieve, or even exceed, an annual quota through a single large customer or national-scale project. Deal sizes are substantial, procurement is centralized, and once alignment is achieved, revenue accumulates quickly. In Africa, the dynamic is almost the inverse. A salesperson may work with five times as many customers, across multiple countries and operators, and still struggle to meet the same target. Deal sizes are smaller, sales cycles are fragmented, and revenue is distributed across numerous incremental wins.
Two decades of projects have helped me understand that the twists and turns of certain clients aren’t necessarily obstacles. They are part of what make the market transformative.
In the Middle East, greenfield telecom deployments are typically the result of deliberate strategic resets. Governments and large operators are intentionally rebuilding digital foundations around 5G, private networks, AI-driven operations, and smart-city platforms. Capital is generally available, long-term vision plays a central role, and projects are frequently justified by strategic positioning rather than short-term return. The primary sales challenge is seldom the availability of budget, but the confidence that a vendor can deliver at scale, and on schedule.
Africa’s greenfield reality is shaped by very different forces. In many markets, networks were not built to full depth or breadth at inception. Legacy infrastructure is often fragmented rather than dense. New RAN deployments are unlikely to be network resets; they are incremental, high-stakes decisions. Each site, upgrade, or spectrum investment must justify itself economically against numerous internally competing priorities.
Paradoxically, this budget constraint often increases impact. Because capital is scarce and highly contested, funding is typically allocated to projects with immediate and tangible outcomes: connecting previously underserved regions or enabling services hitherto unavailable. A single network expansion or upgrade project can simultaneously unlock access to education, financial services, healthcare, logistics, and digital markets. While deal sizes may be smaller, the transformation achieved per dollar invested is often significantly greater than in capital-rich environments.
These contrasting budget realities fundamentally shape how telecom evolutions such as AI-RAN are positioned.
In the Middle East, AI-RAN is more likely to be presented as an optimization layer applied to already substantial investment. It enhances Massive MIMO performance, improves energy efficiency across dense networks, automates operations, and manages complexity at scale. Digital twins are national or city-level constructs, integrated into broader smart-city and digital government platforms, the value narrative emphasizing performance, and futureproofing.
In Africa, AI-RAN plays a more foundational role. Its purpose is not to extract marginal gains from dense networks, but to prevent costly mistakes before they occur. AI-assisted planning, accurate digital surface models, and ROI prediction are used to determine whether project should even start, whether a site should exist at all, how many sites are truly required, and which configurations minimize both capital expenditure and long-term operating risk. Digital twins will typically be smaller, sectional, and tightly scoped around specific areas of interest.
Limited capital is expected to accelerate the adoption of open architectures, shared infrastructure, hybrid network models, and AI-driven planning because they are necessary. In many deployments, intelligence helps to maximize the impact of scarce capital.
Smart budget management in one project can benefit an operator's entire portfolio. Optimised network rollouts prevent overbuilding, cut CapEx waste, and lower operational expenses. Savings from one deployment can fund new initiatives, such as expanding to nearby districts or launching additional services. Strategic planning maximises impact, stretching capital across multiple regions instead of just one site.
Another important point to consider is how tightly telecom is coupled to other infrastructure layers. RAN design cannot be separated from power availability, site economics, and real estate constraints. Hybrid power systems, solar, battery storage, shared towers, and financing instruments can be as decisive as RF performance. Vendors that sell radio capability without addressing these realities may succeed in procurement, but struggle in long-term operation.
For sales teams, the implications are clear. The solutions sold must be designed for economic resilience, operational simplicity, and long-term sustainability. Africa, more than most markets, forces technology to prove its value in the real world. That pressure not only delivers deeper impact locally — it often produces better, more disciplined technology for everyone.
