Ambani sets sights on African telecom market, plans to develop 5G infra

Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani is set to enter Africa with a telecoms venture, seeking to win mobile broadband customers in a high-growth market. Radisys Corp., a unit of Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries Ltd., will provide key network infrastructure, applications and smartphones for Ghana-based Next-Gen InfraCo., according to Harkirit Singh, the executive director of NGIC. He described the plans ahead of NGIC’s launch announcement on Monday in Mumbai, India’s financial hub. NGIC, which is planning to begin operations by the end of this year, will provide 5G broadband services to mobile operators and internet services providers in Ghana.The company “is based on a premise of building affordable digital services in emerging markets,” Singh told Bloomberg News. Other strategic partners in NGIC include Nokia Oyj, Indian outsourcer Tech Mahindra Ltd. and Microsoft Corp., which has increasingly sharpened its focus on the telecoms business following an acquisition of two cloud networking firms in 2020. Ghana, a West African country with a population of just over 33 million, has three main operators: MTN Ghana, Vodafone Ghana and state-run AirtelTigo. NGIC’s strategic partners, its technological prowess and the company’s possession of Ghana’s only 5G license will help it build broadband services at scale, a huge expense for individual mobile carriers, Singh said.