On 4 December 2025 in Yaoundé, a quiet but consequential moment unfolded for Africa’s digital future. As Frehiwot Tamru, Chief Executive Officer of Ethio telecom, and Judith Yah Sunday épse Achidi, General Manager of CAMTEL, signed a three-year Master Service Agreement, the significance of the occasion extended far beyond a formal exchange of documents.
Rather than a routine commercial arrangement, the agreement reflected a broader shift taking place across the continent. It underscored how Africa’s digital transformation is increasingly being shaped by collaboration among African institutions themselves, drawing on shared operational experience and regional understanding. In an industry historically influenced by external models and multinational vendors, the partnership signaled a growing confidence in homegrown cooperation grounded in common realities and long-term continental ambition.
It is, in every sense, a tale of two CEOs. A story of leadership, confidence, and convergence, where two women at the helm of major national operators are helping redefine how Africa builds its digital future.
Strategic Context: Two Operators, One Direction
Since her appointment in 2018, Frehiwot Tamru has overseen one of the most ambitious transformations in African telecommunications. Leading one of the continent’s largest operators, she has been central to Ethiopia’s effort to reposition telecoms as a driver of national development rather than a standalone utility.
Under her leadership, Ethio telecom expanded network reach, modernized infrastructure, and embedded digital services into the daily economic life of millions. Mobile financial services, enterprise solutions, cloud platforms, and digital public services became core to its growth narrative. This evolution is formalized in the company’s most recent NEXT HORIZON: Digital & Beyond 2028 strategy, which signals a shift from domestic focus to regional engagement.
That accumulated experience, particularly in scaling digital platforms within complex regulatory and socio-economic environments, is now being shared beyond Ethiopia’s borders.
For CAMTEL, the partnership reflects a strategic decision to accelerate Cameroon’s own digital ambitions through peer learning rather than external dependency. Since becoming the first Cameroonian woman to lead a major public enterprise in 2018, Judith Yah Sunday épse Achidi has pursued a clear mandate: modernize infrastructure, strengthen national connectivity, digitize public services, and position CAMTEL as a central pillar of the country’s digital economy.
The benchmarking visit to Ethiopia earlier in 2025 laid the foundation. The agreement signed in Yaoundé converted that intent into a structured framework for long-term cooperation.
The Four Pillars of Cooperation
At the heart of the agreement are four pillars designed to translate strategy into execution.
The first is fintech and financial inclusion. CAMTEL’s planned mobile money platform, Blue Money, will draw on Ethio telecom’s experience in launching and scaling digital financial services. The collaboration extends beyond technology into ecosystem design, regulatory navigation, operational models, and consumer adoption. The objective is not simply to introduce a new payment tool, but to integrate digital finance into Cameroon’s broader economic fabric.
The second pillar focuses on connectivity and infrastructure modernization. Digital services cannot thrive without resilient networks. Through strategic support and knowledge transfer, Ethio telecom will assist CAMTEL in improving service quality, optimizing operations, and accelerating infrastructure upgrades to support growing digital demand.
The third pillar addresses sovereign cloud infrastructure and public services digitization. As data sovereignty becomes an increasingly critical policy issue across Africa, this cooperation emphasizes secure, locally managed cloud platforms capable of supporting government services and sensitive national data. It reflects a growing consensus that digital infrastructure must align with national governance and security priorities.
The fourth pillar centers on organizational and customer culture transformation. Technology alone does not deliver lasting change; institutional reform, modern management systems, and customer-centric service design are equally decisive. Ethio telecom’s experience in internal transformation offers CAMTEL practical insight into aligning people and processes with digital ambition.
South–South Cooperation and Pan-African Significance
What sets this partnership apart is its underlying philosophy. Rather than defaulting to external vendors or consultants, CAMTEL chose to collaborate with an African peer that understands the continent’s regulatory, infrastructural, and market realities.
This approach reflects a broader momentum across Africa, where south–south cooperation and digital public infrastructure are increasingly seen as foundational to sustainable digital growth. Recent continental and global engagements have reinforced the importance of sovereign infrastructure, regional knowledge exchange, and partnerships that prioritize long-term capacity over short-term solutions.
In this context, the Ethio telecom–CAMTEL agreement represents south–south cooperation in its most practical form: African institutions exchanging expertise, shortening learning curves, and reducing reliance on imported models. The partnership also creates a digital bridge between East and Central Africa, reinforcing the idea that Africa’s digital future will be built through regional interdependence rather than isolated national efforts.
In this sense, the alliance aligns naturally with broader continental objectives, including the African Union’s digital transformation agenda. It reflects Pan-Africanism not as rhetoric, but as implementation, where cooperation becomes a tool for shared progress.
Leadership as the Real Infrastructure
At its core, this story is about leadership. Frehiwot Tamru is widely recognized as one of Africa’s most influential technology executives, known for institutional reform, strategic clarity, and a long-term view of digital development, including spearheading the adoption of mobile money in Ethiopia. Judith Yah Sunday épse Achidi brings decades of experience, operational discipline, and a pioneering role in Cameroon’s public sector, balancing continuity with transformation.
Together, they embody a powerful shift in African telecommunications leadership. Not only because they are women in a traditionally male-dominated sector, but because their partnership demonstrates what is possible when competence, confidence, and continental vision align.
The Ethio telecom–CAMTEL agreement is more than a bilateral arrangement; it is a blueprint for how African operators can collaborate, how south–south cooperation can be operationalized, and how Africa’s digital transformation can be driven from within.
In the tale of these two CEOs lies a broader lesson for the industry: Africa’s digital future will be built not only on infrastructure and platforms, but on leadership, trust, and a shared Pan-African purpose.
