Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Africa 5G bet is live in Ghana but retail consumers still cannot access it as regulatory disputes linger

When Bloomberg reported in May 2024 that the chairman of Reliance Industries was entering Africa through a Ghana-based telecom venture, the story generated significant interest. Asia's richest man, worth approximately $108 billion, was targeting mobile broadband in a high-growth emerging market. The vehicle was Next-Gen InfraCo, known as NGIC, Ghana's only licensed wholesale 5G provider. Reliance's subsidiary Radisys, an Open RAN specialist based in Portland, Oregon, would supply the network infrastructure, applications and smartphones for NGIC's 5G backbone.

Nearly 2 years later, the backbone is technically live, the government has publicly questioned the significance of that milestone, NGIC has an unpaid licensing bill sitting with the regulator, and Ghanaian consumers still cannot access 5G services on their phones. That is the current state of Mukesh Ambani's Africa bet.

How the deal is structured

NGIC holds Ghana's sole wholesale 5G licence. Its model is deliberately different from the standard multi-operator approach seen in most markets: NGIC builds and operates the shared 4G/5G radio and core network infrastructure, while licensed retail operators including MTN Ghana, Telecel and AirtelTigo connect to the platform and sell services directly to consumers. The architecture is designed to prevent infrastructure duplication, where 3 separate carriers each build towers in profitable Accra neighbourhoods while rural areas get nothing.

Radisys is the infrastructure supplier. Nokia is the core network parent. Tech Mahindra and Microsoft are also listed as strategic partners.

One detail that matters: at the time of the 2024 announcement, none of the strategic partners, including Reliance, held any equity in NGIC. The company offered them an option to convert future payments into equity, but only after demonstrating commercial success first. NGIC's executive director Harkirit Singh was explicit about this at launch. "First we have to be successful to show the value that we create before they come in," he said at the time. Reliance's financial exposure is therefore a technology supply and services contract, not an ownership stake. Not yet, anyway.

From announcement to activation

The original plan called for NGIC to begin operations by end of 2024. That deadline slipped. A limited soft launch covering parts of Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi happened in November 2024, but full commercial activation did not follow on schedule.

The government grew impatient. Ghana's Ministry of Communications set a hard deadline of December 2025, warning that NGIC's exclusive licence terms could be renegotiated if it was not met. NGIC wrote to the National Communications Authority on December 15, 2025 to declare operational readiness. The NCA conducted a pre-commercial inspection and issued clearance on February 4, 2026. NGIC received that letter on February 25.

On March 3, 2026, NGIC announced that Ghana's shared 4G/5G backbone was commercially active and live in selected parts of Accra, Kumasi and Tamale. CEO Tenu Awoonor described it as the moment Ghana moved "from 5G ambition to 5G execution."

Ghana's Communications Minister Sam George was not impressed. He called the announcement "unfortunate" and "misleading." His position: a commercially active wholesale backbone means nothing to Ghanaians until retail mobile operators actually connect to it and start selling 5G plans. That had not happened. NGIC had approximately 49 active sites at the time, a modest number that is not unusual for an initial phased rollout, but well short of the 70% population density coverage the company has committed to achieving by Ghana's 70th Independence Anniversary in March 2027.

A separate problem is financial. NGIC's total licensing fee to the NCA is $125 million. It has paid $6.25 million. An instalment of $6.25 million that was due in September 2025 remains outstanding. NGIC has applied for a moratorium on those payments, arguing it cannot service the licensing debt until retail operators connect to the network and revenue begins to flow.

The broader picture

Outside Ghana, Ambani's Africa footprint is limited. Reliance Industries is an overwhelmingly India-centric business. Its most powerful vehicles, Jio with 450 million Indian subscribers, Reliance Retail with 12,800 stores across India, the Jamnagar refining and petrochemical complex, and a media joint venture with Disney valued at $8.5 billion, are all domestic. Anant Ambani, Mukesh's youngest son who runs the energy and materials division, has spoken about global ambitions but has disclosed no specific African targets.

There are no confirmed Jio consumer telecom deployments, Reliance Retail stores, or Reliance energy investments anywhere in Africa. The Ghana NGIC play through Radisys is the extent of Ambani's current African commercial footprint.

That gives the project an outsized significance relative to its current scale. If NGIC successfully builds out its network, signs retail operators, and starts generating revenue, the equity conversion option available to Radisys becomes meaningful. If it does not, the whole exercise remains a technology supply contract in a market that promised more than it has delivered so far.

Bloomberg noted at the time of the 2024 announcement that the Reliance-NGIC partnership carried a diplomatic dimension beyond its commercial logic. India has been pushing back against China's growing digital infrastructure influence across Africa, and a major Indian conglomerate supplying the 5G backbone of Ghana's national network fits neatly into that geopolitical frame. The commercial case and the strategic case are running in parallel, even if the commercial case is still finding its footing.

Ambani has not spoken publicly about the Ghana project since the 2024 announcement. The next significant test of whether the bet pays off will come as retail operators begin the process of connecting to NGIC's live commercial platform and Ghana's NCA pushes toward its March 2027 coverage target. The backbone is on. The question is whether the country, and Reliance, can make it count.