Minister of ICT and Digitalisation, Hon. Ursula Owusu Ekuful (right), presenting the Telecom CEO Award to Selorm Adadevoh (left) at the GITTA 2021 gala night.
The MTN Group has officially announced the appointment of Selorm Adadevoh, current Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, as its new Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). Adadevoh will succeed Jens Schulte-Bockum, who is stepping down as Group Chief Operating Officer at the end of his contract term in March 2024.
A statement from MTN said Jens Schulte-Bockum will step down from his executive role on 31 March 2024 but will remain a non-executive director on the boards of major subsidiaries – MTN South Africa, MTN Nigeria, and Bayobab.
“We congratulate Selorm on his new appointment and thank him for successfully leading the company and steering it through challenging times, and for his hard work and commitment to MTN Ghana over the past five and a half years. We have no doubt that he will excel in his new role,” said MTN Ghana Board Chairman, Dr. Ishmael Yamson. Adadevoh will be assuming his new role on the 1st of April 2024 at MTN Group.
Mr Adadevoh took the helm of affairs at MTN Ghana in 2018 and has since maintained MTN’s dominance in the Ghanaian telecom market and has been a pivotal figure in driving the company’s new Ambition 2025 strategy.
He has over 20 years of experience in Strategy, General Management and Technology Management and has held several senior management positions in Telecoms and Financial Services. Before his appointment at MTN, he was the CEO of Digicel based in Haiti, the largest of Digicel’s 32 operations throughout the world.
Under his leadership MTN raised over a billion cedis in Initial Public Offering in 2018, presenting the largest primary share offer in the history of the Ghana Stock Exchange. With 13 million registered Mobile Money subscribers, MTN Ghana also made GHS 139 million interest payments on Mobile Money in the same year, and through Mobile Money, foreign currency remittances have become easily facilitated, resulting in US$ 90 million inflows into Ghana in the first quarter of 2019.
In maintaining MTN Ghana’s culture of improving customer experience, driving business growth and delivering value to stakeholders, the company offers a varied and customized range of exciting products and services to suit lifestyles and expectations and invests in network improvement.
MTN Ghana under his watch currently holds over 70% market share across voice, data, SMS, and mobile money. As the only profitable telco in Ghana, MTN reported an impressive GHS1.7 billion plus profit after tax half year 2023, on the back of over 26 million subscribers, over 14 million mobile money customers, and almost 99% combined coverage of 2G, 3G and 4G nationwide
His sterling leadership has won him several accolades including winning the highly coveted Telcom CEO of the Year award on two consecutive occasions at the Ghana Information Technology and Telecom Awards (GITTA).
Under his leadership, MTN Ghana has also won a number of awards. Notable amongst them is the GITTA Hall of Fame awards. MTN Ghana is the first company to be inducted into the GITTA Hall of Fame award. It didn’t come as a surprise when they were adjudged the number one company at the 2019 edition of the Ghana Club 100 Awards.
Adadevoh also held key roles at Caribbean mobile network operator, Digicel, as well as with Millicom in Africa, in addition to several roles in the USA, UK, and Latin America at various stages in his career. He was the Chief Operating Officer of Digicel. Before that, he spent seven years at MTN in the role of CEO for MTN Benin and then MTN Cameroon.
In his new position, Selorm will become a member of the MTN Group Executive Committee.
The telecom giant has appointed its current MTN Operations Executive, Stephen Blewett to replace Selorm as the new CEO for MTN Ghana.
Stephen Blewett re-joined MTN in July 2023 as the Operations Executive for Markets, with executive responsibility for the Group’s smaller West and Central Africa markets and for providing broader operations support across that region to the Group’s Senior Vice President for Markets.
In welcoming the new CEO of MTN Ghana, Board Chairman, Dr. Ishmael Yamson noted “We welcome Stephen into the MTN Ghana family and look forward to working with him to move the company forward to achieve our Ambition 2025 strategy and beyond,”
The Board of Directors of MTN Ghana and its subsidiaries also expressed their gratitude to Selorm for his immense contribution to the company during his tenure as CEO and wished him every success in his new role as MTN Group’s Chief Commercial Officer.
“We also welcome Stephen to the MTN Ghana family and look forward to welcoming him to the business in the months ahead,” the statement said.
By: Alexander Bombande –Digital Economy Magazine