Roshi Motman heads Tigo and Airtel merger in Ghana

In Tele2, a Swedish-based telecom company, progressed in a variety of management roles including, product development and management, sales and customer operations.

Prior to that, she was responsible for the development of mobile entertainment at Modern Times Group (MTG), the parent company of the Viasat Television Network.

Ms. Motman studied Electrical Engineering and Business Development at Chalmers University in Göteborg, Sweden and has an outstanding record of developing people and businesses.

Roshi has received several honours such as the 2015 COM World Series AfricanCom Awards for CEO of the year in 2015, trailblazer at the 5th Ghana Telecom Awards in May 2015. She was also named second on the Sweden's list of 75 young and promising women.

Bharti Airtel has completed talks with rival Millicom International Cellular for a merger in Ghana.

Industry players say, the merger forms part of India’s top telecom operator, trying to escape a throat cutting tariff war in its home market as well as offset its severe debt of $12 billion dollars in India.

The merger is expected to see the combined entity replacing Vodafone to become the second largest telecom operator in Ghana and wage intense competition to Ghana’s lead telecom operator MTN.

According to Ghana’s National Communication Authority, Airtel held a 15.71% market share for mobile data market with nearly 3.1 million users as of October end, while Tigo had a 14.71% share, or 2.9 million users. Vodafone held a 17.91% market share with more than 19.4 million subscribers.

Of the over 37.4 million voice users in Ghana, Vodafone had a market share of 21.86% at the end of October, while Tigo held 14.35%, or 5.4 million users. Airtel had a 12.54% share and more than 4.7 million users.

Meanwhile MTN continues to lead in voice subscriptions for the period recording 19,296,157 which represents a percentage increase of 2.82% from November 2016’s figure of 18,766,106. MTN’s market share for the month under review was 50.37%.

Vodafone comes second. It recorded a decrease in their mobile voice subscription of 8,289,157 as at the end of December 2016. This represents a percentage decrease of 0.18% from November 2016’s figure of 8,304,783. Vodafone’s market share for December 2016 was 21.64%

There have been concerns as to the job security of workers in both companies. According to Ms Roshi, both managements will run separately for now.

However, she noted that job cuts would eventually happen moving forward adding that highly competitive individuals will be maintained.

By integrating the two networks, the combined business is expected to provide Ghanaian customers with a major boost in both rural and urban network coverage and reinforced network stability and resilience.

Branding strategy by the merged companies have been of public concern in the country. Identities such as brand name, brand code number among others.

Management of the two companies say the brand strategy of the combined entity is yet to be formulated and would be based upon what is best for the combined operations.