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‘Africell has the largest market share in Gambia telecoms’

Feb 10, 2021, 1:09 PM | Article By: Adama Tine

The director general of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), Momodou Jallow, yesterday disclosed before the legislators of the Public Enterprises Committee (PEC) of the National Assembly that the telecommunication sector in the country is driven mainly by mobile sector which has a telephone rate of 112%. The technologies, being used to provide services is mainly 2G, 3G and 4G, with Africell having the largest market share of the telecoms in The Gambia.

He added that an undertaken was made by PURA to make sure that they submit activity report and financial statement for the year ended 2019. However, for some technical reasons and for some lapses, it was not done as stipulated by the Public Enterprises Committee (PEC).

He said when PURA presented its 2018 report, they indicated activities that involved handsome activities that were evolving and some of them are materialising such as the liberalisation of the gateway to the extent that licences have been issued to service providers.

According to the Chairman of PURA Alieu Ngum, PURA has always been guided by the Act, and the regulations that empower it to regulate service providers. He added that PURA also makes it very plain that, if action is taken against a service provider, those actions are guided by law and if the parties are at grief, they can still go back to that law to get redress.

He added that this has happened in the past to some service providers, and in the end, they chose to negotiate out of court, which PURA also is amenable to as the authority to encourage quality of service delivery to the consumers. However, at the same time, PURA tries to ensure that investments that have been made in those services become profitable to the investors.

“When we came here the last time, an IPP has been developed in the electricity sector in connection with the agreement signed between Nawec and KAR Power, which is adding to the generating capacity of Nawec,” he concluded.