France-based Orange Group has agreed to sell its 70-percent stake in Telkom Kenya, Kenya’s third-largest mobile phone company, to U.K-based Helios Investment Partners, ITNewsAfrica reported.

The Kenyan government holds the remaining 30 percent of Telkom Kenya, TotalTele reports.

Orange struggled to make money in Kenya and has been trying for some time to exit the market, TotalTele reports.

Orange operates in 19 countries in Africa and the Middle East, and had said its Kenyan business was part of its strategy to be a top-two player in the markets where it operates, according to MobileWorldLive.

Telkom Kenya is the country’s leading fixed-line operator but No. 3 for mobile connections. It had 4 million mobile customers as of June 2015 according to the Kenyan regulator.

It lags behind mobile market leader Safaricom, which has more than 24 million subscribers, and India-based Bharti Airtel, which has 7 million, according to GSMA Intelligence, MobileWorldLive reports.

Orange’s stake in Telkom Kenya has been for sale for a while, and Helios is one of a number of bidders that wanted to acquire some or all of it. Previous bids have failed including one from Vietnam’s Viettel Group at the end of 2014.

Helios Investment Partners claims to be one of the largest investment firms focusing on Africa and is among the few independent pan-African private equity investment firms to be founded and managed by Africans.

Its investments include Helios Towers Africa, which builds and maintains more than 4,800 mobile towers and leases space on those towers to wireless telecommunications services providers across Africa. HTA has acquired, through sale and leaseback, towers in Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana and Tanzania.

Other Helios investments include a 12.4-percent stake in Africa Oil Corp., a Canadian oil and gas company; Mall For Africa; and ARM Pensions, Nigeria’s largest independent pension fund manager.