The new investment is the largest single year investment by the company over the past 15 years, Koku Devitor reports from Accra
AFRICA’S mobile telecom giants MTN will invest $200 million in 2021 to upgrade its infrastructure in Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, CEO of MTN Ghana (pictured) said Friday.
Addressing senior editors of the Ghanaian media, the CEO said the new investment, the largest single year investment by the company over the past 15 years, would boost service delivery especially in the remotest communities and continue giving subscribers exciting experiences.
‘Usually, when companies are 25 years, they slow down on investment, but for MTN, our appetite for continued investment in our infrastructure is rather rising due to circumstances on the ground,’ said Adadevoh.
He said without these investments in the Ghanaian market, ‘In the next five years, we would be asking the same question again about what the roadmap of technology for development is.’
Part of the reason for the new investments, he said, was that the growth rate in demand for some services in the sector was much faster than the growth rate of technology and infrastructure to meet them.
The CEO said the telecoms sector also needed to match supply with the galloping demands for telecom services brought on by the outbreak and spread of Covid-19.
He said the Covid pandemic had compelled people to work from home and access many services online, causing a surge in the demand for data services than anticipated.
‘Digitisation has galloped, and consumption has galloped far ahead of network technology,’ Adadevoh stated.
At the current rate, he said, if the sector did not expand existing infrastructure, a time would come when things would be at a stand-still.
‘We cannot achieve a digital economy that Ghana wants unless we invest in the needed technology, so we need this investment to continue helping companies to work virtually to achieve productivity,’ he added.
The CEO said MTN, whose shares remain the most-traded stocks on the Ghana Stock Exchange since its listing on the Accra bourse in 2018, paid a total of 2.6 billion Ghana cedis ($424 million) in taxes to the Ghanaian government in 2020.
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