Founding president of policy think tank IMANI-Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has expressed his disappointment at the continuous engagement and payments of payments of funds to KelniGVG, despite the change in government.
The outspoken social commentator, wants the Mahama government to immediately terminate the contract instead of waiting for it to end in 2028.
KelniGVG, a private firm signed the controversial contract with the then Akufo-Addo government in 2018 under Minister for Communication Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, to monitor revenues from the telecommunication companies.
IMANII was one of the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) that kicked against the contractual agreement, saying the whole implementation and execution was an operation that is basically a scam.
The Haitian company, as part of the contract was to design, develop and implement a common platform for traffic monitoring, revenue assurance, mobile money monitoring and fraud management, a service already being rendered by Afriwave and Subah Info Solution according to IMANI.
IMANI argued, KelniGVG was not fit to provide the services it was contracted to do. The current government in April 2025 pledged it will not renew the contract between the state and KelniGVG, in line with its opposition to the contract since it signing.
Samuel Nartey George, the Minister for Communication and Digital Technology, during a press conference made the announcement of the termination of the contract.
The minister cited high operational costs as the key factor for the discontinuation of the contract. He disclosed the cost of running the Common Monitoring Platform (CMP) has ballooned to account for 84% of the total revenue generated from the system—up from 28% at the inception of the contract.
On the back of the announcement, a vice president of IMANI Selorm Brantie, welcomed the decision saying “Rather, there were dangers that our data was being given access to by people who were not authorized tio have that access, and we were paying a humongous amount of money for literally building a spreadsheet, technically. And for some us, we believe that was a giant scam that the government underwrote and therefore, seeing the contract run out is good news for everybody who has Ghana at heart. So essentially, it’s going to save Ghanaians some money? Beyond that, we should never, ever put ourselves in position where we are scammed by unscrupulous individuals who use state apparatus to hoodwink us of lots of money for no reason”.
Despite the positive development in recent time, Cudjoe is still not satisfied and would have wished for the immediate termination of the contract agreement. He cannot wait for the contract to end in 2028.
As it stands, Ghana dolls out a whopping US$1.5 million every month to the firm. With these monthly amounts paid to the firm, Cudjoe is unconvinced the output in terms of transparency from the company’s operations.
“Ghana was committed by Ursula Owusu-Ekuful to paying US1.5 million every month to a company she claimed was going to catch revenue theft by telcos. We have never seen a single credible report since the company began cashing out freely from 2018”, he stated.
“Sadly, they are still cashing out, possibly until 2028, and no credible reports have been seen. Instead of cancelling the crooked scam contract the current minister suggested the contract would not be renewed”, Cudjoe.
He urged the Minister and the Attorney General and Minister for Justice Dr Dominic Ayine, to abrogate the contract and take steps to retrieve paid to the firm.