Telecel Launches Promo To Crown Three Millionaires

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Telecel Launches Promo To Crown Three Millionaires

Telecel Ghana has launched a four-month promotion that will crown three customers as millionaires, part of a campaign offering more than GH¢5.1 million in total prizes.

The M’ahitti Promo runs for 120 days and breaks from Telecel’s past consumer campaigns, which typically named a single grand-prize winner at the end of a run. This time, three separate customers will each collect GH¢1 million at different points during the promotion, alongside 12,000 daily winners of GH¢100 and 48 weekly winners of GH¢20,000. Telecel is running the promotion with digital partner Kunim Global.

“Not one, not two, but three millionaires,” said Aneth Muga, Telecel’s Director of Consumer Business, at the launch, describing it as the company’s way of thanking customers who use its network daily. She said the structure is designed to reward loyalty while pushing more customers toward Telecel’s digital services, particularly Telecel Cash and the Telecel Play App, where transactions earn double entries into the draws. Customers earn a standard entry for every GH¢10 or more spent on recharges, bundles or cash deposits, with weekly winners drawn from all sixteen regions.

Entry is free: customers can opt in by dialling *500#, texting WIN to 500, or activating through the Telecel Play App. The National Lottery Authority is overseeing the draws through its Caritas platform. “Telecel has complied with all regulatory requirements for the commencement of the promo,” said the NLA’s Marketing and Caritas Officer, Christiana Antwi, adding that her office would continue monitoring each draw for fairness. Telecel has warned customers to engage only through its official channels and said no winner will ever be asked to pay a fee, share a Telecel Cash PIN, or make any payment to receive a prize.

The campaign adds to a run of consumer promotions Telecel has kept active through the year, including its ongoing Text2Win SMS trivia contest and the Dream Car Promo, both of which have already paid out cash prizes to customers in recent weeks.

Minority Backs VALCO Workers, Demands Disclosure

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Minority Backs VALCO Workers, Demands Disclosure

Parliament’s Minority Caucus has backed protesting VALCO workers and demanded the government disclose full details of a planned equity deal for the state aluminium company.

The caucus’s statement, signed by Ranking Member on the Select Committee on Lands and Natural Resources Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong, followed a July 27 protest by Volta Aluminium Company Limited workers and the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU-Ghana) over what they called unclear plans to bring in a strategic investor. The Minority said the workers “know the company” and understand its operations better than “politicians” or “propagandists,” and argued the government should explain rather than dismiss their concerns.

At issue is a process the government has termed “strategic equity capitalisation,” under which it plans to cede a portion of state ownership in VALCO to an outside investor in exchange for capital and technical support. The Minority said the phrase itself has fueled uncertainty, asking whether it means an outright sale, a transfer of management control, or privatisation “under a different name.” The caucus called on government to publish the framework governing the process, VALCO’s audited financials, an independent valuation, the proposed equity structure, and the identity and selection criteria for any prospective investor, along with related Cabinet and board approvals. It also questioned the timing, noting VALCO’s board chairman recently reported a first-half 2026 profit of $3.19 million, and separately alleged, without providing evidence, that overlapping influence among officials connected to the aluminium sector risked what it called “state capture.”

The government’s side of the process has been laid out separately by officials at GIADEC, the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation, and the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah. GIADEC has said the plan is a strategic partnership rather than a sale, with public control remaining intact, and has denied specific claims linking businessman Ibrahim Mahama to the process. Buah has said VALCO is currently running only 90 of its 500 reduction cells and carries $400 million in legacy debt, and that the company needs roughly $700 million in fresh investment to reach full capacity. “The objective is simply to revive VALCO, not to sell it,” he said.

ICU-Ghana, for its part, has pushed back on suggestions its protest amounted to intimidation, arguing that ceding a 70 percent equity stake, as it understands the proposal, would still mean surrendering controlling ownership regardless of how the arrangement is labelled.

Power Outage Also Cut Off Water Supply

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Power Outage Also Cut Off Water Supply

A nationwide power outage that hit Ghana before dawn on Wednesday also knocked out Ghana Water Limited’s treatment plants, cutting drinking-water supply to households already left without electricity.

The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) said a disturbance on the National Interconnected Transmission System at about 3:11 a.m. caused several generating plants to trip simultaneously, interrupting power across the country. The company said it activated its established restoration procedures and deployed engineers to bring supply back “without compromising safety,” and said it “will provide further updates as more information becomes available.” GRIDCo has not released details on how many customers or regions were affected, nor has it given a timeline for the technical investigation it opened into the cause; two days on, no findings have been made public.

The outage’s reach became clearer through Ghana Water Limited’s own statement the same day. The utility said most of its production systems depend entirely on grid electricity, and that the loss of power left several treatment plants and pumping stations unable to operate, halting water production and distribution in affected areas. “Our technical teams are on standby,” the company said, describing the situation as “beyond our control” and pledging to resume operations as soon as stable power returns.

The disruption adds to a run of recent grid-related incidents this year, including planned outages tied to transmission line upgrades in Kumasi and precautionary substation shutdowns in Accra over flood risk, underscoring how closely Ghana’s water supply and other essential services remain tied to the stability of the national grid.

Parliament Approves 20-Year Electronic Toll Deal

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Parliament Approves 20-Year Electronic Toll Deal

Ghana’s Parliament has approved a 20-year concession agreement with Rock Africa Limited to reintroduce electronic tolling on 66 roads and bridges nationwide, ending a suspension that has lasted since 2021.

Lawmakers adopted the Roads and Transportation Committee’s report under Article 181(5) of the 1992 Constitution and the Public-Private Partnership Act, 2020 (Act 1039), authorising the Ministry of Roads and Highways to sign the deal with a special purpose vehicle Rock Africa will incorporate. The company, described in Parliament as an indigenous Ghanaian firm, will finance, build and operate the tolling system across 13 corridors covering 38 existing toll points and 28 new ones, before handing the system to the state at the end of the concession. Government will keep 70 percent of gross toll revenue, with the concessionaire retaining 30 percent over a term split between three years of construction and 17 years of operation.

The deal traces back to the previous NPP administration, which suspended manual tolling in 2021 as it rolled out the Electronic Transfer Levy, then had Cabinet approve a roadmap for a digital tolling system in 2024 before leaving office. Ranking Member Kennedy Osei Nyarko welcomed the current government’s decision to carry that plan through. “The current government did not abandon the previous Cabinet’s approval,” he said, arguing the revived tolls would strengthen the Road Trust Maintenance Fund.

Bimbilla MP Dominic Nitiwul, who served in the previous government, defended the earlier suspension as a response to the burden Ghanaians faced once the e-Levy took effect, noting Cabinet at the time had expected the levy to raise around GH¢10 billion against less than GH¢100 million from manual tolls. He backed the new arrangement on different grounds: an electronic system that cuts queueing and fuel waste at toll booths. “The road tolls are electronic, and it is 20 years,” he said, calling the terms worth supporting.

The Roads Minister has previously said he wants the system to become one of the best on the continent, and the government has framed the reintroduction as central to closing funding gaps in road maintenance that have persisted since tolling was paused.

Ameyaw TV Opens Second Studio To Scale Up

Roger A. Agana
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Ameyaw TV Opens Second Studio To Scale Up

Ameyaw Debrah Media has opened a second production studio in Accra, expanding capacity for video, photography and live broadcasting as Ameyaw TV pushes into longer-form original programming.

Founder Ameyaw Debrah said the expansion followed directly from outgrowing the company’s first studio, which he opened in 2022 as part of his 41st birthday celebrations. “It wasn’t long before we outgrew the space,” he said, adding that the team’s productions had grown more ambitious than the original facility could handle. Studio 2 is built as a flexible set that can be reconfigured for different formats rather than a single fixed layout, and it comes equipped with network infrastructure for live production and simultaneous streaming across platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

The new facility will host Ameyaw TV’s growing slate of original shows while also renting out to external production companies, agencies, corporate brands and independent creators, who can bring their own equipment or use the company’s in-house cameras, lighting and audio gear. Debrah said the goal extended beyond floor space: he wants Studio 2 to function as a shared production hub for Ghana’s wider creator economy, supporting collaborations beyond his own platform.

The launch follows a broader restructuring of Ameyaw TV earlier this year, when the platform split into four niche sub-brands, Reels, DoCU, Sports and Podcasts, aimed at capturing audience segments the main channel’s general entertainment format couldn’t reach as easily. Debrah, who marked 20 years in Ghana’s media industry in February after starting out as a blogger in 2005, said Studio 2 will support an expanded content lineup including documentaries, travel shows, business conversations and home improvement programming, alongside the entertainment and lifestyle coverage the platform has built its reputation on since launching in 2018.

Liberia Honours Wode Maya With Presidential Pin

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Liberia Honours Wode Maya With Presidential Pin

Liberian President Joseph Boakai has honoured Ghanaian travel vlogger Wode Maya with a Special Presidential Pin for his content promoting the country’s culture and tourism.

Boakai presented the pin to the content creator, whose government-listed name is Berthold Kobina Ackon, during Liberia’s 179th Independence Day celebrations. He was recognised alongside Jenkins S. Nyuma, chief executive of The Gathering Group, for what the Executive Mansion described as outstanding contributions to promoting the country during the anniversary. The citation specifically credited Wode Maya’s travels across Liberia for highlighting attractions and stories about the country that had previously gone untold.

Wode Maya, a Pan-African travel content creator whose videos reach millions of viewers across the continent and beyond, called the recognition deeply humbling and said it would strengthen his commitment to telling Africa’s stories from an authentic perspective. He thanked Boakai for the honour and said it reaffirmed the value of using digital media to highlight the continent’s achievements and potential, closing his remarks with, “Long live the Republic of Liberia.”

The gesture fits a broader theme of Boakai’s presidency. Since taking office in January 2024, he has framed part of his mission around restoring what he has called Liberia’s “lost image” abroad, a message reflected in his administration’s rallying slogan, Think Liberia, Love Liberia, Build Liberia. Honouring a widely watched independent content creator for showcasing the country to an international audience lines up with that broader push to reshape perceptions of Liberia beyond its history of civil conflict.

Apple Beats Estimates But Services Miss Weighs

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Apple Beats Estimates But Services Miss Weighs

Apple beat Wall Street’s quarterly forecasts on strong iPhone sales, but its shares fell as much as 4 percent after hours as Services revenue missed expectations.

The company reported diluted earnings of $2.02 per share on revenue of $109.42 billion for its fiscal third quarter, ahead of analyst estimates of $1.89 per share and roughly $108.9 billion. iPhone revenue climbed 21.7 percent year-on-year to $54.25 billion, marking the third straight quarter of more than 20 percent iPhone growth and Apple’s strongest smartphone run since the pandemic-era upgrade cycle. Chief Executive Tim Cook said the company “achieved June quarter records in every geographic segment,” pointing to continued demand for the iPhone 17 lineup, particularly its higher-end Pro models.

The earnings beat wasn’t uniform across the business. Services revenue, which includes the App Store, subscriptions and advertising, came in at $30.74 billion against analyst expectations of $31.22 billion, and sales in Greater China also fell short of forecasts at $18.8 billion. Mac revenue jumped 28.7 percent to $10.35 billion on strong demand for the new MacBook Neo and MacBook Pro lines, while iPad revenue slipped nearly 6 percent. The Services shortfall appeared to weigh more heavily on the stock than the overall beat, dragging shares lower in after-hours trading even as the topline numbers cleared expectations.

The pullback followed a sharp run-up heading into the report: Apple stock had gained about 23 percent since January and briefly overtook Nvidia this week to reclaim the title of the world’s most valuable public company, with its market capitalisation touching nearly $5 trillion for the first time in Apple’s history.

Apple’s comparatively restrained AI spending has become a selling point for investors wary of the scale of AI infrastructure investment elsewhere in the industry; the company has leaned on on-device processing and custom silicon rather than the hundreds of billions of dollars in data centre spending committed by rivals such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta. Market research firm Counterpoint expects Apple to gain market share this year across smartphones, PCs and tablets, with all three categories on track for record share levels.

Looking ahead, finance chief Kevan Parekh said the company expects foreign exchange headwinds to cut fiscal fourth-quarter revenue growth by about 2.5 percentage points, with gross margin projected between 47 and 48 percent.

Microsoft Shares Jump 14% On Strong Earnings

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Microsoft Shares Jump 14% On Strong Earnings

Microsoft shares rose more than 14 percent at Thursday’s opening bell after the company beat quarterly earnings estimates and issued stronger-than-expected revenue guidance, reversing a slide that had cost the stock nearly a fifth of its value since January.

The world’s fourth-largest company by market value reported adjusted earnings of $4.74 per share on revenue of $90.01 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter, ahead of analyst forecasts of $4.24 per share and $87.61 billion. The quarter’s results included a $3.2 billion gain tied to Microsoft’s investment in AI lab Anthropic, alongside lower-than-expected costs from a voluntary retirement programme, partly offset by Xbox severance and impairment charges. Microsoft forecast first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of between $89.85 billion and $90.95 billion, above what markets had expected.

Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform, grew 43 percent year-on-year in the quarter, ahead of the roughly 40 percent analysts had projected, pushing full fiscal-year Azure revenue past $100 billion for the first time. Overall Microsoft Cloud revenue climbed 27 percent to $59.3 billion. “This year, Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats,” Chief Executive Satya Nadella said, up from just over 20 million seats in April. GitHub Copilot, the company’s separate coding assistant, has reached 50 million users.

Microsoft’s commercial backlog, a measure of contracted future revenue, rose 8 percent from the prior quarter to $678 billion, a jump the company attributed mainly to customers outside the major AI labs, suggesting broader enterprise demand beyond the handful of firms building frontier models.

Capital expenditure for the quarter rose 70 percent from a year earlier to $41 billion, with roughly two-thirds directed to short-lived assets such as chips. Microsoft said its 2026 calendar-year spending plans remain effectively unchanged, though the headline figure fell on paper after the company extended the assumed useful life of its data centres and office buildings from 15 to 25 years, a change that reduces depreciation costs rather than actual spending.

Barclays analysts said the results gave investors reason to revisit the stock, citing improved Azure and Office growth alongside a capex outlook that avoided negative surprises. Jake Behan, head of capital markets at Direxion, said the quarter showed Microsoft’s AI investments translating into revenue growth and Copilot adoption, adding that markets are now rewarding companies that can monetise AI rather than simply spend on it.

The report lands amid broader investor unease over AI infrastructure costs across the sector; Alphabet recently raised its own capital spending forecast to as much as $205 billion.

Milan Legend Franco Baresi Dies At 66

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Milan Legend Franco Baresi Dies At 66

Franco Baresi, the AC Milan and Italy defender who defined an era of Italian football, has died at 66, his former club announced Friday.

“The entire history of AC Milan is in tears following the passing of Franco Baresi,” the club said in a statement. “His example and integrity will be forever etched into the Club’s DNA, just as his iconic number 6 shirt is.” Milan did not disclose a cause of death. Baresi had undergone surgery in August 2025 to remove a pulmonary nodule and had since been receiving immunotherapy, treatment the club disclosed at the time.

Baresi spent his entire 20-year professional career at Milan, making more than 700 appearances and captaining the side for 15 seasons before retiring in 1997. He won six Serie A titles and three European Cups with the club, staying loyal through two relegations to Serie B early in his career. Milan retired his number 6 shirt at the end of his playing days, the first such honour in the club’s history, and named him Player of the Century in 1999. He was inducted into the Italian Football Hall of Fame in 2013 and was named by Pelé among the 125 Greatest Living Footballers at FIFA’s centenary awards in 2004.

On the international stage, Baresi won the 1982 World Cup with Italy and earned a place in the tournament’s all-star team at the 1990 World Cup on home soil, where the Azzurri finished third. He captained Italy to the 1994 World Cup final against Brazil, a match he played in full for 120 minutes just 25 days after knee surgery, before Italy lost on penalties. He also represented Italy at the 1980 and 1988 European Championships and the 1984 Olympics.

Baresi’s final public appearance came in February, when he and former Inter Milan defender Giuseppe Bergomi carried the Olympic torch into the San Siro for the opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. His path to Milan began after Inter rejected him as a young player in favour of his older brother, Giuseppe Baresi; the two siblings later became the enduring image of the Milan derby, exchanging pennants before kickoff for years as opposing captains.

Tributes followed from across football. Transfer journalist Fabrizio Romano called him “an absolute legend of football and of AC Milan and Italy,” while former Italy captain Gianluigi Buffon recalled facing Baresi as a 17-year-old making his Serie A debut in 1995, describing the experience as one that shaped his own career.

Court Quashes ORC’s Bid To Wind Up Zeepay

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Court Quashes ORC’s Bid To Wind Up Zeepay

An Accra High Court has quashed its own July 17 order authorising the Office of the Registrar General (ORC) to wind up and liquidate fintech firm Zeepay Ghana Limited, ruling it lacked jurisdiction to issue the order in the first place.

Justice Samuel Faraday Johnson of the Commercial Division made the ruling Thursday after Zeepay’s lawyers argued the ORC had used the wrong legal procedure, filing an Original Motion rather than the Petition required for such orders. Counsel for Zeepay, Kwesi Fynn, told the court the ORC had misled the judge into granting the earlier order on that basis. Lawyer for the ORC, Benjamin Zigorsh Nyakpenu, argued the agency was entitled to proceed ex parte under subsidiary legislation, but the judge sided with Zeepay, finding that the governing law required a Petition and that the court therefore had no jurisdiction to grant the original orders.

The July 17 ruling, obtained without notice to Zeepay’s lawyers, had directed the ORC to take over as liquidator, freeze all of Zeepay’s bank accounts, seize its digital records and systems, and compel anyone holding company assets to hand them to the ORC. The ORC had cited the Bank of Ghana’s revocation of Zeepay’s dedicated electronic money issuer (DEMI) licence as its grounds for the action. During the ten days the order was in force, ORC officials went to Zeepay’s Cantonments office and asked staff to surrender digital access codes; staff refused, and it was through that visit that Zeepay’s directors learned the winding-up order existed. The company then applied to have it quashed.

Thursday’s ruling reverses that specific order but does not resolve Zeepay’s wider legal exposure. The DEMI licence revocation that prompted the ORC’s action still stands; the Bank of Ghana said at the time that Zeepay’s continued use of the licence “constitutes a threat to the stability of the payment system,” citing unbacked e-money balances. Separately, creditor Obsidian Achernar Ltd has its own winding-up petition pending against Zeepay over an alleged $1.22 million debt, and the company’s founder and chief executive, Andrew Takyi-Appiah, was personally ordered in April to pay a customer $11.6 million after the court declined to remove him as a named defendant.

Zeepay’s lawyers have indicated the company intends to pursue the damage caused by the July 17 order in a separate legal forum.

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