New Delhi. Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) chief Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio is now going to enter the African market after dominating India. In fact, the African country Ghana has signed a deal with Reliance Jio's subsidiary, Tech Mahindra and other vendors to set up 4G and 5G infrastructure in the country. According to the report, this total deal is worth more than $200 million.

What is Ghana's plan?

Ghana now wants to make better use of its telecom capacity. The public sector Next-Gen Infrastructure Company (NGIC) there has partnered with Reliance Jio's subsidiary Radisys, Tech Mahindra and Nokia. Its aim is to create the necessary infrastructure for affordable 5G mobile broadband services in the country.

NGIC has been allocated 5G spectrum and local telcos will use shared infrastructure to launch services in the next six months. According to reports, the total deal is worth over $200 million.

Ghana praised India

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the minister of communication and digitalization of this West African country, said that India is our 'strategic choice' for this project because the demographics of Ghana and India are more or less similar. Also, we want to replicate the success story of India in the telecom industry.

Ursula said, 'India's demographics are very similar to ours. The Jio model that changed the direction and condition of India's telecom sector was started just a few years ago. So, that model is still very fresh and we can repeat that story in Ghana.'

chose India instead of China

Ekuful said Ghana is part of the 33-nation Smart Africa Alliance. Other countries on the continent will be closely monitoring this infrastructure project as they will want to know if this model can be implemented in their countries as well.

The Ghanaian minister was asked that Indian vendors have never done such a deal before. Whereas Chinese suppliers have a lot of experience in this field, then why did they choose India instead of China.

Responding to this, Ekuful said, "India was a strategic choice for us. We do not want to get caught up in any geopolitics. We want what is best for our national interest. Our aim is to take advantage of India's experience in this region."

Conversation with Elon Musk too

The Ghanaian minister said that we are also considering satellite connectivity with 4G and 5G networks to improve our telecom sector. He said that he is in talks with Elon Musk's Starlink for this. Jio's rival in India, Bharti Airtel, is one of the most prominent mobile network operators in the African continent.