A 37-yr-old Father's Strange Vodafone Ghana Tale

In 2019, when the-then 47-yr-old (former) carpenter looks back at when he won the grand prize of 1million dollars from Vodafone Ghana as part of its promotion, what will he say to his two children?

Will he still be in his Trassaco Valley house, or would he have left the place for fear of more snubs from the rather-rich entourage? Would his money be well-invested in stocks, and a part put aside for his kids, or would it have been finished?

It is certainly none of my business, but in a society in which a 37yr old carpenter can win a cool 1 million dollars, without recourse to how he will manage that money or the home that clearly is "inconsistent" with his profession, is a society I have serious issue with.

Forget the fact that Vodafone is so filthy-rich to have given a 4x4 vehicle PLUS an almost $400,000 home AND a $1m cash-prize to one person, and let us think about the upturned values that we are presented with.

Large amounts of money have a way of influencing us for better or for worse, and for many people it is for worse. Couple that with the artificial class that Vodafone has created, and you are left with an explosive set of circumstances that needs the wisdom of Solomon to manage.

Good luck to him and his family. I do hope he maximises the opportunity to obtain all the wisdom possible for him to lead a very fulfilling life!

Vodafone Ghana's Got What's Coming

Some of us hate to say "we told you so", but some of us really did carry on till the cows came home on how bad and inimical for Ghana the Vodafone deal last August was. Here is what I wrote for nowpublic.com:

The specialists can bandy around figures that point to gross inefficiency in GT till the cows come home, but they can never escape what the legendary Mark Twain wrote--to wit: “there are lies, damn lies and statistics.” Even if we were to accept the plausible argument that GT is mismanaged and in dire need of capital injection, we cannot take away from the fact that despite this “mismanagement”, GT was able to roll out DIALup4u, despite the fact that many foreign cards were on the market that enabled internet access with no less than a GT landline base. On top of that, GT rolled out an aggressive campaign around 2005/2006 of BROADBAND4U (est.2004), which is now reportedly available in all the regions of the country.



I am not quite sure how dedicated a Vodafone Ghana will be to ensuring that the remotest parts of the country will have broadband internet access. As a state-owned company, it will always be in its interest to ensure deep penetration of its products in the country--and the bottom line is not always what counts. Contrast that with any strategic investor that comes into the country: unless the government monitors, there will be scant attention paid to the provision of rural telephony.

I cannot get over the fact that no less than the UK's Serious Fraud Office is considering querying Vodafone Ghana over what it calls financial irregularities. I cannot help but wonder what would have happened had this current administration not assumed power.

I do not believe for a second that they have a spotless record, but the retention of Ghana's fibre optic as a strategic national asset is nothing to be sneezed at. I do hope Ghanaians will strip away the polarization and politicization and remember that a fibre optic that is retained by Ghana is a deal that benefits Ghanaians--just the way our policy-makers should be looking at every aspect of policy.

As the Week Opens in Accra: Raining on Vodafone Ghana (ONETOUCH)'s Parade;

Offlate, blogging has been poor. I used to apologise for that. These days, no more, for being a blogger means being a real person--and real life does get in the way. So let me just apologise just this once--just for good measure: my many apologies!;-)

On a very serious note, a number of issues have preoccupied me -no end. Let's start with our communications industry.

Poor Vodafone Ghana Lines

I don't know about you, but I have noticed that ever since Vodafone Ghana became entrenched in the country, its lines have been very poor. Last week, around 1.00am just as I was pretending to finish off some important reading, I got a text message that I can get discounts on 1,2,5,10,20 ghana cedi credit.

As if anyone buys 10,20 ghana cedi ONETOUCH credit! Heard of the global credit crunch by any chance?

I shrugged, cancelled the text, and promptly went to sleep--not without ruminating over some Vodafone Ghana experiences the previous week. The first involved calling a Facebook Belgian friend, who was unable to hear me when I spoke with her on my ONETOUCH line, but could hear better on the MTN number. Ditto with BBC World Have Your Say on Madagascar, when I texted the BBC to have them call me (standard procedure) to make some noise about the usual regional integration stuff. I podcasted myself--as it were--by recording the piece on my digital recorder. I was appalled with the playback: a good part of it was inaudible, with the line breaking at intervals of thirty seconds. Thank you Vodafone Ghana! You came into the country to do what, exactly?? The erstwhile ONETOUCH was so much better!

I hate to say this, but off-late, the execrable-performing MTN has been performing less badly than ONETOUCH!