Ghana’s leading wholesale telecommunications service provider, vodafone last two weeks joined Africa’s top Telecoms Carriers and Executives to discuss the future of the African Wholesale Telecoms Market and determine feasible strategies to promote the distribution of capacity into the fourteen (14) fully landlocked countries in Africa.

The event, called Africa Connect 2013, was held in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, from September 17 to 18, 2013.

Speaking at opening of Africa Connect 2013 on the panel discussion on the theme, Driving Capacity Distribution to Landlocked Countries; Commercial Strategies, Technological Solutions and Government Intervention, the Managing Director, Julius Nkansah Owusu-Kyerematen reiterated that, internet penetration is so low, yet the investment is not being rationalised.

During his presentation he mentioned that, “What is the point of spending hundreds of millions in the same area to drive a penetration of 15% in data where there is untapped 85% within the same country that is largely un-served; it is not economically viable”.

He further advised that, “There is the need for operators to start revising their notion of competitive advantage and start moving more into sharing model.”

He expressed however that, “when you go cross-country this is a bit different. Vodafone Wholesale as an incumbent took it up to promote this interconnectivity by connecting to Togo and Burkina Faso. This has opened a whole market for undersea cable players like MainOne, ACE to carry traffic from the shores of Ghana all the way to Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and potentially Chad if we get the right handover partnerships”. 

He encouraged other operators to complete the different stretches of this cross border infrastructure to give resilience in a form of rings to the existing network.

The conference brought together top telecom wholesalers in Africa who met to discuss the future of the wholesale telecoms market.

Amongst other things, the participants discussed ways to develop enhanced and more efficient Commercial Strategies and partnerships across the continent.

The conference, which was organised by TelCap (Capacity Media, UK), touched on various themes such as re-examining Africa’s role in global telecom development and developing regulatory frameworks that foster growth in the telecommunications sector.