5G Contract to week old company was strategic -Ursula
The Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has justified the government’s decision to award a 5G licensing contract to NextGen InfraCo, a company established just a week before the contract was approved. She clarified that NextGen InfraCo was created specifically to undertake the 5G rollout, as no other existing infrastructure company possessed the capacity to manage such a significant project at the time.
Owusu-Ekuful emphasized that the direct award of the contract to this newly formed company aligns with the government’s strategy to overcome past challenges and expedite the deployment of the 5G network in Ghana.
“This is a special purpose vehicle, and once the government decided to use a neutral infrastructure company to deliver this service, there was no existing neutral infrastructure company capable of doing so at that moment,” she stated.
She further explained that the company had to be specifically formed to deliver the 5G services based on strategic policies and government decisions. This approach was chosen to address previous experiences and accelerate the deployment process without going through an auction.
“It is borne out of our experiences, and that is why we chose not to auction it,” she added.
Her remarks come in response to scrutiny from investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni, who raised questions about the timing of the contract awarded to NextGen InfraCo Ltd. Awuni pointed out that the company was formed just a week before receiving executive approval from President Akufo-Addo and criticized the sole-sourcing method used to award the contract, which is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Furthermore , the minister disclosed that NextGen InfraCo (NGIC) is expected to launch internet services across the country within the specified period, with plans for expansion to other parts of Africa. NGIC is a consortium formed between the government of Ghana and seven other partners, including Ascend Digital, K-NET, Radisys, Nokia, Tech Mahindra, and two telcos—AT Ghana and Telecel Ghana.
