Orange has spent years building one of Africa’s biggest telecom businesses almost entirely in French-speaking markets. It may now be about to buy its way into one of the continent’s most competitive English-speaking ones.
The Paris-listed group has opened talks to acquire Telecel Group’s 70 percent stake in Telecel Ghana, according to a report by a French business publication on Tuesday that was widely picked up across the French press.
The Government of Ghana, which owns the remaining 30 percent, would keep its shareholding. The report says a deal could close before the end of 2026. No price has been disclosed, and neither Orange nor Telecel Group has publicly confirmed the talks.
If it goes through, it would be the most significant change of ownership in Ghana’s telecom market since Telecel itself bought the business from Vodafone less than four years ago.
The asset Orange is circling has a long ownership history. Vodafone bought 70 percent of the former state operator Ghana Telecom in 2008. In February 2023, after regulatory approval from the National Communications Authority (NCA), Vodafone sold that stake to Telecel Group, a pan-African telecom investor. The company was renamed Telecel Ghana in 2024.
Under Telecel, the business has been growing again. Chief Executive Patricia Obo-Nai said in March that the company grew by almost 30 percent at the end of its 2025 financial year and returned to profit. She said the network had expanded from around 5,000 sites to about 9,000, and that the company planned to spend roughly 150 percent more on network infrastructure in 2026 than in 2025.
Whoever owns Telecel Ghana inherits a clear number two position in a market dominated by one player. According to the NCA’s statistics for the end of 2025, MTN held 72.92 percent of mobile voice subscriptions and 79.68 percent of mobile data subscriptions.
The timing is notable. Ghana has just reopened its 5G market. After the NCA dropped the exclusive wholesale arrangement that had made a single state-backed company the only 5G provider, MTN Ghana paid about $202 million for new spectrum in the 700MHz and 3GHz bands.
Telecel secured three lots in the 2.3GHz band and says it is targeting a 5G launch by December 2026. A new owner would arrive just as the next phase of network competition begins, and as capital spending needs rise sharply.
For Orange, Africa and the Middle East is now its fastest-growing region. In the first half of 2026, the division reported revenue of €4.58 billion, up 13.9 percent, and EBITDAaL of €1.76 billion, up 16.1 percent. It had 180 million mobile customers and 52 million Orange Money customers across 18 countries at the end of June.
In February, the group set out its 2026 to 2030 strategy, “Trust the future,” with a target of around 40 million additional customers by 2028. It flagged Africa and the Middle East as a key driver and left room for targeted acquisitions in the region. Ghana, with more than 40 million mobile subscriptions, would be a meaningful step towards that number.
Ghana is often described as Orange’s entry into English-speaking Africa. That is not quite accurate. Orange already operates in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Botswana. But none of those markets comes close to Ghana’s size, and Ghana would sit directly between two of Orange’s stronger West African operations, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso.
When Telecel bought Vodafone’s stake in 2023, the approval came with conditions on investment, governance, employment and the network. A new buyer should expect similar scrutiny, especially with 5G commitments now on the table.
There is also the question of what Telecel Group wants. Ghana is its largest and fastest-growing market. Selling it soon after the business returned to profit would be a significant strategic choice, and the price would have to reflect that recovery.
For Ghanaian subscribers, the change of name on the shareholder register matters less than what follows it. The real test of any deal will be whether a better-funded challenger can narrow MTN’s lead on data, where the gap is widest, and whether Ghana’s regulators use the moment to set terms that make the market more competitive rather than simply changing who sits in second place.
Source: Innovation Village
