Minister Supa worried about EcoCash's dominance of the mobile money market

Minister of ICT Supa Mandiwanzira has expressed his unease at the fact that EcoCash controls at least 98 percent of the mobile money market. Mandiwanzira said that this was not good for the general public as this encouraged monopolistic behaviour.

Speaking at a mobile payments conference held in Harare last week, Mandiwanzira said,

Ninety percent of the transactions are being controlled by one mobile network. That is a disaster.

It may be a commercial success but it’s a disaster if we look at it from a public sector point of view. What happens if that system fails at a critical moment? That means we have disrupted the entire nation because we have relied on one supplier.

We almost have a monopoly so they think they can do whatever they want. We have encouraged the regulator, Potraz to really deal with some of these monopolistic tendencies.

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Mandiwanzira also warned the mobile network operators, although the message seemed directed at Econet, that they needed to share infrastructure because the assets they had were given to them by the government by means of licenses. He said this entitled the government to tell the operators what to do.

You cannot hold an asset that you were given by government through a license and think that it is entirely yours. Others must access what you have built but they should do so at a fee, a reasonable fee. That is the message we have given to Econet, Netone and Telecel. You own the frequency to the extent of your license but we can also tell you what to do

More: Financial Gazette