(May 8) (Bloomberg) -- China Mobile Communications Corp., parent of the world's most valuable phone company, is ``interested'' in making investments in Africa, President Wang Jianzhou said.

``There are many phone operators in Africa,'' Wang told reporters in Hong Kong today. The Beijing-based parent company of China Mobile Ltd. ``hasn't participated in the bidding'' for MTN Group Ltd., said Wang, who didn't say whether the Chinese company is interested in making an offer later.

China Mobile Communications may join carriers including Bharti Airtel Ltd. seeking to invest in MTN, Africa's biggest mobile-phone operator, UBS AG has said. The Chinese company said last month that it is changing its policy of only buying controlling stakes, widening the field of investment targets in its search for a second overseas acquisition.

Vodafone Group Plc, Reliance Communications Ltd. and China Mobile Communications may also be interested in investing in MTN, UBS analysts Suresh Mahadevan and John Slettevold wrote in a report on May 6. MTN said on May 5 that it is in ``exploratory talks'' with Bharti Airtel, India's biggest mobile carrier.

China Mobile Communications owns 74.3 percent of Hong Kong- listed China Mobile, the world's biggest phone company by users. The company had 392.1 million customers at the end of March.

The Chinese parent, which last year paid about $460 million to buy Pakistan's Paktel Ltd., its first acquisition outside Chinese territory, will consider minority stakes in emerging- market phone carriers in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Wang said in an interview last month. China Mobile previously only pursued investments that result in management control, he said.

Third-Generation Investment

Separately, China Mobile Communications has invested 14.2 billion yuan ($2 billion) in its so-called third-generation wireless network in eight cities including Beijing and Shanghai, Wang said today. It's the first time the company has disclosed its investment in the project, which uses the domestically developed time division synchronous code division multiple access, or TD-SCDMA, standard.

China Mobile last month started commercial trials of the 3G service, which allows faster downloads from the Internet. Wang declined to disclose user numbers on the TD-SCDMA network.

(Editor: Jia Fu)