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Mobile Specific Taxes Hinders Connectivity-Solomon

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Gabriel Solomon is senior vice president, The GSMA which represents 750 mobile operators in more 220 countries in Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Solomon builds, leads and develops the GSMA’s public policy agenda and thought leadership programme to ensure that the Association plays an influential role in shaping the global regulatory agenda. He is responsible for raising the GSMA’s profile internationally through effective communications and relationship development with a large number of key audiences. Solomon spoke to hilary okeke.

Mobile Broadband in Africa

The GSMA is promoting HSPA as the pivot for penetration of mobile broadband. If you look across sub-Saharan Africa, broadband penetration is very low and for mobile, HSPA technology will benefit from global economies of scale – total cost of ownership will be much lower than any alternative technology, which is why I think in Africa, you need HSPA to drive access to mobile broadband. It will stimulate an accelerated growth in mobile broadband and prices will be coming down, strictly for handsets and dongles over the next few years, making it more affordable for millions of Africans. With HSPA, you will see a base station capable of having 84MB. That, to your laptops or handsets is huge. Do you need another technology? No. The total cost of owning an HSPA device – whether it is a phone or a dongle on a laptop or embedded on a laptop will come down massively. We are expecting a billion HSPA subscribers by 2012. The price of handsets for GSM users will come down as low as $30. From Qualcomm’s presentation, a low-end HSPA handset is now $53. This is an affordable technology for the mass market.

Mobile Broadband Internet Centres in Nigeria

We are holding talks with operators in Africa such as Vodacom, MTN. We are very open to working in Nigeria on certain projects but at the moment, there is nothing on ground. You know, things move quickly and we are still considering the projects here having spoken with the operators.

Connecting the Unconnected

Well, it depends on the context in which you are speaking. For example in Nigeria, the licences only came in some seven years ago. Now typically, there is an international average – you look at the average market, it takes 10 years to get 90-95per cent of the population connected. Look at what is happening in Africa, there is a massive amount of investment and this is driving coverage in rural areas. I think about 10 African countries have covered above 90per cent of their total populations and that is going to increase tremendously over the next few years. What we are seeing is a massive connection of rural communities, for example, the village phone concept in which MTN Uganda has connected about 500 unconnected people. So long it is the rural area, connection there includes other basic services and in that way, people are getting leverage in ICT, leverage in mobile network. It is true that there is a dearth of connectivity in the rural areas right now and that is regrettable.

Operators, GSMA Going Green

The GSMA development fund has a programme called ‘Green Power for Mobile.’ It is targeted at re-capitalizing the market; provide scale so that green installations become more affordable because for operators, that is the way out. At the moment, many of the green installations are quite capital intensive. Already we have seen green initiatives happening where solar and wind are used to generate power and operators are investing in these installations.

GSMA and Green Projects

The fund really is used in partnership with equipment vendors – solar panel providers, wind turbine providers. Being a new alternative means to generating power, most of our members are looking at it. If it is affordable and makes business sense and not too capital intensive, they will go for it but it has to be reliable and also has to make sense financially. And that is where the fund is trying to have an impact, to lower the prices of the solution and ensure that they operate at typically grade specifications that operators demand. When power is out, the network can be interrupted, calls drop and no one is happy.

Removal of Mobile Specific Taxes and Rural Connectivity

Obviously, people in the rural areas are poorer than those in the cities and affordability is a critical factor. When you impose specific taxes on handsets or airtime, it increases the price and makes services less affordable. It makes it harder for people in the rural areas to connect. Effectively, what these taxes do is constrain the market size, making products and services affordable by only a few people. We are not saying remove Mobile and Mobile services taxes; we are saying treat it like a normal good, not like diamond or caviar.

GSMA Projects for Africa

We are doing a lot in East Africa – in refugee camps. We are connecting refugee camps in Uganda and Rwanda with MTN and Zain’s ‘one network.’ We have leveraged on those to provide connectivity for places you could not imagine possible. There are lots of activities going on there.

Highlights of Abuja CTO

Well, the last time I came here, probably six months ago, I had a lot of calls dropping from my network but this time, I have not had a drop call yet and I am very impressed. So, I think the quality of service issues should be addressed here in Nigeria and I think the operators due to their investments are committed to building capacity and extend their network. I am very happy to see that because it is really happening; and also the roll out of Mobile broadband again, being able to connect my laptop through HSPA – it is all becoming fantastic!

African Regulatory Bodies and Growth of Telecom

I think the regulatory bodies are doing a very good job and what our members need is consistency and transparency and when you have that; when you have a regulator and a government that do not seek to get windfall from the industry now but seems to partner the industry for the long term, that is when you see fantastic results. That is why our members invest as much as their potential. When you see inconsistent regulation, when you see government demanding windfalls from the industry, say from licences; that is when you see constraints in investment; that is when the potentials to invest plummet. We did the research and saw how regulatory inconsistencies can reduce investment by 25% in sub-Saharan Africa and as you probably know, our members have committed to investing $50 billion in Africa for the next 5 years. This is the amount for GSM alone. You will also have investments for CDMA and probably fixed lines. What is going to be very important in underpinning the mobile broadband age in Africa, I think is open access on the sea cable linking Africa to the rest of the world, providing an umbilical cord to the global economy. Those are critical. A cable from West Africa to the rest of the world, I think has a lot of commercial potentials and can deliver a lot of values. So, guaranteeing regulatory consistency means that we might actually increase that investment by $12.5 billion, amounting to $62.5 billion.

Challenges to Growth of Telecoms in Africa

A lot of the challenges have to do with the infrastructure – you talk about getting network to rural areas, there are no roads, there is no electricity, there are no distribution points. For example, if our members in Europe want to connect someone in a very rural area, they have the capacity to do so – electricity, roads to carry out maintenance and other cost effective factors powered by infrastructure. That is not the case in Africa. I believe there is a strong argument for the telecom sector to work in conjunction with other infrastructures in the area – power, roads, railways – and leverage on those. I think also in Africa, electricity is maintained by the state; there is the need to liberalize this sector. I know certainly that in some countries, Mobile operators invest in generators and then provide electricity. They are effectively doing the job of the electricity company. For the investment in Mobile broadband, they are going to need 6 transmission pipes for fibre to effectively carry all these data and doing that in an affordable and efficient manner means you have to look across the industry to see where you can effect a change.

Competition Between GSM and CDMA in African

I think there has been competition particularly as fixed lines have used CDMA at the 450 level, which is quite a good spectrum for them. But the fixed line operators are suffering greatly. In Kenya, they have the CDMA network but they have had to now have a GSM network. Across the world, we are seeing CDMA operators replacing their network with GSM. I think the CDMA market share would decline significantly over the next few years while Mobile broadband would take up that share.

Mobile broadband

One of the issues is about affordability which is the bottom-line particularly in Africa. I think that the great demand for broadband needs the services delivered in an affordable way. How do you do that? How do you issue the licence? How much does the government want to licence the operators for these technologies? In Tanzania and South Africa, operators have been given long term licences and they have not been charged a premium for Mobile broadband services. The NCC would play a critical role in ensuring that there is enough spectrum here for Mobile broadband.

 


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Moniepoint Marks 10 Years of Transforming Nigerian Businesses

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Moniepoint Inc., Nigeria’s definitive platform for small businesses and Africa’s all-in-one financial ecosystem, today released its 2025 Year in Review, marking a decade of “financial happiness” and a transformative year of growth.

Moniepoint Marks 10 Years of Transforming Nigerian Businesses

Moniepoint

Highlighting its role as the backbone of Nigeria’s entrepreneurial economy with over 6 million active businesses, the company revealed that its microfinance bank has now disbursed over ₦1 trillion in credit to thousands of businesses from provision stores and supermarkets to building materials sellers.

It is worthy to note that on average these businesses experienced growth by more than 36% after accessing credit, signposting its primacy as a transformational growth level and instrument of deepening shared prosperity.

Moniepoint uses alternative data points that include transaction histories, business patterns and payment behaviours in a bid to accommodate what traditional credit scoring misses to drive financial inclusion and access to credit.

The company’s 2025 performance reinforces its role as a critical financial infrastructure which not only supports the Nigerian economy, but also impacts everyday lives, creating immense value.

Founded in 2015 by Tosin Eniolorunda and Felix Ike, Moniepoint Inc (formerly known as TeamApt Inc) has established itself as the leading financial platform for Nigeria’s vast network of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), offering an integrated suite of services, including digital payments, business bank accounts, credit, foreign exchange (FX), and management tools.

During the year, as Nigeria’s largest merchant acquirer, now powering 8 out of every 10 in-person payments made across the country, Moniepoint MFB, the banking and payments subsidiary, processed ₦412 trillion in transaction value handling more than 14 billion transactions. This clearly suggests that Moniepoint is well-positioned to play a greater role in Nigeria’s steady march towards a trillion dollar economy by 2030.

“Our journey has been one of intentional evolution,” said Tosin Eniolorunda, Group CEO and Founder of Moniepoint Inc. “What started as a passion to solve overlooked problems has evolved into a platform powering the dreams of millions.

“As 83% of employment in Africa exists in the informal economy, our mission to create financial happiness is an operational mandate that guides our product development, our market expansion, and our capital allocation decisions.”

Beaming with enthusiasm, Eniolorunda continues, “Yet for all we have accomplished, we approach our second decade with the clarity that our work remains unfinished.

“As we enter this next chapter, we do so with strengthened conviction in our strategy, deepened partnerships with world-class institutional investors, and an organisation scaled to deliver on Africa’s entrepreneurial potential.

“The infrastructure we have built over the past decade provides the foundation. The journey is far from over, but our resolve has never been stronger. To our partners, our customers, and our team: thank you for a decade of impact. We are just getting started.”

In 2025, Moniepoint Inc. reached a series of critical inflexion points, highlighted by the successful completion of its Series C funding round, which raised over $200 million in equity financing from leading institutional investors, including Development Partners International, Google’s Africa Investment Fund, Visa, the International Finance Corporation, and Verod Capital.

The year also marked the launch of MonieWorld in the United Kingdom, extending Moniepoint’s platform to serve the African diaspora by strengthening key remittance corridors and laying the foundation for the delivery of comprehensive cross-border financial services.

Moniepoint MFB re-launched its savings product in a firm demonstration of the company’s commitment toward its’ oft stated mantra of providing financial happiness. Data reveals in terms of savings behavioral patterns, the majority of users choose to save on a daily basis, with focus across business operations (24%), rent (16.5%), and education (10%) representing top savings priorities.

The launch of Moniebook and the acquisition of a national Microfinance Bank license for Moniepoint MFB further expand the company’s regulated capabilities and product depth.

TeamApt Ltd, the switching and processing subsidiary of Moniepoint Inc., also achieved major regulatory and operational milestones in 2025 that have solidified its position in the global payments landscape. After a rigorous certification process, the company successfully secured licenses from Mastercard and Visa to act as a processor and acquirer for these global card schemes..

This strategic move allows TeamApt to support international card payments directly and offer these critical switching services to other businesses across the continent.

Monnify, the web payment gateway processed N25 trillion in the period under review, demonstrating remarkable resilience and industry confidence firmly positioning it for more business-to-business transactions.

Moniepoint’s impact extended beyond banking into critical social interventions even as the company partnered with the Federal Government to support the Rice Intervention Programme, reaching nearly 850,000 beneficiaries, and worked with the Kaduna State Government in grants disbursement to vulnerable citizens.

Through these initiatives, Moniepoint continues to build the infrastructure required to unlock Africa’s entrepreneurial potential, positioning itself as a trusted partner for the delivery of large-scale economic empowerment programmes.

As Moniepoint Inc. enters its second decade, its well chronicled decade-long evolution from a backend technology provider to a household name, directly complements the Nigerian government’s vision of a more inclusive, data-driven, and productive financial landscape. To read more about the 2025 Year in Review Report:, visit http://2025.moniepoint.com


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Paradigm Initiative Hails New Data Protection Laws as World Marks Privacy Week

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As the world observes Data Privacy Week under the theme “Take Control of Your Data,” Paradigm Initiative (PIN) has commended countries that enacted or strengthened data protection laws in the past year to protect citizens’ privacy rights.

Paradigm Initiative Hails New Data Protection Laws as World Marks Privacy Week

PIN

The week marks the January 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first international treaty on data privacy and protection.

PIN spotlighted Djibouti, The Gambia, and Burundi for passing data protection laws in June, September 2025, and January 2026, respectively. It also recognised Botswana, whose law took effect in January 2025, and Algeria, which amended its legislation in July 2025 to mandate Data Protection Officers.

“We applaud these strides,” PIN said, urging data protection authorities across Africa to prioritise implementation and enforcement to uphold data subjects’ rights.

In Nigeria, PIN’s advocacy has yielded key wins. In 2024, it challenged unauthorised websites selling sensitive personal and financial data of Nigerians for as low as N100. Strategic litigation forced United Bank for Africa (UBA) PLC to pay N8 million to customer Miss Folashade Molehin for unlawfully opening a domiciliary account without her consent.

In 2025, the Federal High Court in Abuja ruled against Domino’s Pizza (operated by Eat’n’Go), awarding Chukwunweike Araka Akosa N3 million for unsolicited direct marketing via his phone. The court deemed it a violation of Section 37 of the 1999 Constitution and Sections 25 and 26 of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023. The case originated via PIN’s Ripoti platform, which documents and redresses digital rights abuses across Africa, offering pro-bono legal aid.

Yet challenges persist. PIN warned that countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, South Sudan, Sudan, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, and Western Sahara lack robust laws, exposing citizens to grave privacy risks.

It called on Liberia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, and Libya to urgently enact data protection frameworks.


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MTN Group Names Shoyinka Shodunke IT Core Design Executive Ahead of March 2026

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MTN Group has announced the appointment of Shoyinka Shodunke as Executive: IT Core Design and Delivery, effective 1 March 2026.

MTN Group Names Shoyinka Shodunke IT Core Design Executive Ahead of March 2026

Shoyinka Shodunke

Shoyinka brings more than 29 years of experience in technology leadership, digital transformation and innovation across Africa’s telecommunications sector.

His career spans several senior roles, including Director of Technology at Vodafone Ghana, Chief Technology and Information Officer (CTIO) at MTN Cameroon, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at MTN Zambia, and General Manager: Architecture for the MTN Shared Services Hub in Southeast Africa.

He currently serves concurrently as CIO for MTN Nigeria and MTN South Africa, where he has led large-scale digital initiatives impacting more than 80 million subscribers and overseen a technology ecosystem comprising over 350 professionals.

Shoyinka is recognised for a leadership approach anchored in adaptive intelligence, resilient system design and collaborative value creation.

His work has focused on leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance human creativity, strengthen system resilience and drive innovation at scale.

In 2025, he was named MTN Group CIO of the Year for his role in advancing one of Africa’s most ambitious digital transformations, supporting MTN’s evolution from a traditional telecommunications operator into an AI-enabled technology organisation.

He also received the Tech Champion in Telecoms and CIO of the Year awards at the CIO and C-Suite Awards Africa.

His academic background includes an Advanced Management Programme (AMP) at Harvard Business School, an MBA from the University of Northampton, a Postgraduate Diploma in Global Management from the University of Salford Manchester, and a Bachelor of Technology in Mathematics and Statistics from the Federal University of Technology in Nigeria.

In his new role, Shoyinka will lead the development and execution of standardised and AI-enhanced IT architectures across MTN’s footprint.

His responsibilities will include integrating AI-driven automation, predictive analytics and digital transformation initiatives to improve customer experience, operational efficiency and service agility, while accelerating innovation cycles and time-to-market.


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