EWIA Infrastructure, operating at full capacity, withstands the deluge

Through EWIA Infrastructure, we are installing telecommunications towers in rural areas of Ghana—a business with a bright future in a country that has long since embraced modernity. Our order books are full to the brim, and not even torrential rains can stop us.

Today we’re sharing a quick update on EWIA Infrastructure. Between 2020 and 2026, we have now implemented telecommunications projects at 91 locations in Ghana, either by erecting new towers or retrofitting existing ones with solar panels.

39 of these towers are small monopoly towers for rural telecommunications, and 7 are cellular lattice towers (you can see the difference in the pictures). We have already completed 6 towers this year, and 8 more are currently under construction:

• 3 of them are nearing completion

• 4 are getting started this week

Heavy rain delayed construction

Weather conditions have caused some minor delays. It’s the rainy season in Ghana—business as usual, really—but this June, the country has been hit by unusually heavy rainfall. The capital is also affected, and even people who have lived here for more than 40 years say they’ve never seen flooding like this before. Public transportation collapsed, streets turned into raging torrents, shops were flooded, and many families lost all their possessions in the floods.

In some cases, the conditions for the floods are man-made, caused locally by poor planning, according to the UN Development Programme, but of course climate change also plays a role. That is why we are here: The transition to renewable energy not only makes our customers more resilient in the marketplace, but above all makes society more resilient to climate change.

Ghana is Relying on Solar Solutions

To put this into context: In Ghana alone, due to rising costs for grid electricity and diesel, more than 6,600 transmission towers are expected to be built or retrofitted (primarily) with solar solutions over the next three to five years. The current development plan for mobile communications calls for the construction of up to 15,000 additional cell towers over the next few years. The construction and operation of these cell towers have been concentrated among a few providers. EWIA Infrastructure has already carried out corresponding projects with all major providers.

When it comes to cell towers, a distinction must be made between so-called monopoles, tripod towers, and four-legged towers (lattice towers). These differ in terms of design and height as well as technical specifications. The detailed design is specified by the clients or by the clients’ engineering firms. In Ghana, four-legged lattice towers are frequently erected for cell towers. The reason is that there often:

• multiple network operators share a single tower,

• diesel generators, solar panels, and microwave radio technology are integrated,

• the sites are difficult to access and are therefore designed to be as future-proof as possible.

  
  

In contrast, monopoles are increasingly being used for smaller rural cell sites or sites dedicated solely to LTE/5G.

Framework agreements have already been signed with various mobile network operators and technology companies. These include Netis Ghana Ltd., Reime Ghana Ltd., Rainbow Mobile Networks, Afriwave Telecom Ghana, and i-Engineering Ghana Ltd.

The estimated (construction) cost for the cell towers serving the five providers currently stands at €4,100,000. Additional framework agreements are in the works.

Rainbow alone has at least 50 construction sites scheduled for this year.

The upfront financing requirement per tower ranges from €5,000 to €15,000, depending on the equipment. The upfront financing period averages 4–6 months. This is the period during which capital is tied up in the purchase of materials and advance payments until the client pays the full amount for construction and services, including our margin. To date, we have been able to operate seven construction sites simultaneously. Thanks to last year’s successful financing round, in which we raised a total of €380,000—most of it to increase our working capital—we can now increase our capacity to 10 to 12 concurrent construction sites.