News:
October 15, 2025
The Minority on the Communications and Information Committee of Parliament has argued that it is not right to give out AirtelTigo in the manner the Communications, Digital Technology and Innovation Minister, Samuel Nartey George wants to give it because AirtelTigo has shown resilience over time despite the challenges they operate under,
Responding to a question during a press briefing on the merger of AirtelTigo with Telecel, Dr. Mahama Tiah Abdul Kabiru pointed out that AirtelTigo makes monthly revenue of seventy million Ghana cedis as a government entity, and that is no mean an achievement.
“There are a few government entities in this country that are yielding such revenue, so with that capacity; we don’t think that is a proper way to give out AirtelTigo to telecel.
According to him, there was a roadmap that was drawn when the former Minister was there; it was such that you need a private partner participation; we are against a national assert which was being consolidated to protect strategic national investment infrastructure being given away.
The difference between privatization and private-sector participation is that, one’s private sector participation, you are allowing them to take some shares in the operation. The government can still be majority shareholder or minority shareholder but it gives it the opportunity to get dividend from the profitability of that particular company. So we are not against privatization and the road map is what the Minister had agreed to; but came back and backtracking on that, he said in an interview.
Dr. Kabiru further added that with the contract, government was contacted to determine the participation of the private-sector in AirtelTigo and there were three companies – Hanna was given the bid but due to the 2024 general elections and financial challenges it withdrew from the bid.
But Afritel was still interest, so why was the Minister not interested in the road map, the Minister started with that road map; all of a sudden he said he was no more dealing with Rektron, he suspect that Rektorn is no more playing ball that is what we are against.
We want the best for AirtelTigo, so we don’t understand why the company that wants to inject one hundred and fifty million dollars at a goal and scale it up to one billion in five years is being pushed aside, he stated.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso Ghanamps.com