The ultimate goal is a pan African common market – single digital alliance of 32 nations will be the enabler
Ghanian mobile operator Afriwave Telecom has joined the Smart Africa Alliance project to unite Africa into a single digital market, reports AfricaTech.
Smart Africa is an alliance of 32 African countries, international organisations and global private sector players which aims to define Africa’s digital agenda.
The alliance needs Africa’s respective heads of state to commit to the socio-economic pact in order to usher Africa into the knowledge economy through affordable comms and computing. The vision is to create a single digital market in Africa by 2030, as a precursor to the creation of a pan-african common market.
Afriwave is the first wholly owned Ghanaian company to join the Alliance and its membership and experience could inspire other African operators. It creates a blueprint for a national and regional Interconnect Clearinghouse across Africa, according to Lacina Koné, CEO of the Smart Africa Secretariat.
AT could involve four MNOs
Afriwave Telecom (AT) is the first and the only licensed Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH) Operator in Ghana and currently provides these services to four licensed mobile network operators, MTN, Vodafone, AirtelTigo and Glo Mobile, in Ghana.
AT also provides international telecommunications interconnect clearinghouse (ICH) services to international wholesale carriers who route international telecom traffic into Ghana. The operations of ICH have brought several benefits to the Ghanaian telecom sector, according to AT’s deputy CEO Francis Poku, so AT is seeking to extend its services to other parts of Africa and collaborate with other stakeholders with similar ambitions.
“We are looking forward to collaborating with other interconnect clearinghouse operators in Africa as we contribute towards the One Africa Network objectives of Smart Africa,” said Poku.