Accra, Jan. 11, GNA - The MTN Group has confirmed that the Head offi= ce of the West and Central Africa

(WECA) region would to be located in Ghana, a statement in Accra said on Monday. The WECA regional office comprises of nine operating units - Nigeria= , Benin, Cote D'Ivoire Liberia, Cameroon,

Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Congo Brazzaville and Ghana. Ms. Mawuena Adjo Dumor, Corporate Service Executive of MTN Ghana, sa= id Ghana was chosen because of

its friendly business environment among other things. She said the WECA headquarters would be located at MTN Ghana's head office in Accra and would be the

administrative hub of the nine countries that constituted the WECA region= .. Hitherto, the WECA regional office director, Mr. Christian De Faria,=

who is also Vice President of the region,

did not have a stable office so had been moving from country to country t= o do his work, but he would now work

from Ghana. "The establishment of the office in Ghana provides enormous benefits not only to our business but to the country

and we are excited to be hosting it," Ms Dumor said. She said the benefits include leveraging economies of scale in respe= ct of supply of telecoms infrastructure across

the region, which will have positive implications for the national agenda= to make Ghana the gateway to West Africa. Ms Dumor said it would also create opportunities to apply Ghanaian knowledge, expertise and experience to

other MTN operating units' technical and stakeholder engagement initiativ= es. Ghana has been recognized at the MTN Group level for execution excellence in Marketing and Social

Responsibility. "Indeed the Ghana operating unit continues to support knowledge shar= ing in these key areas of the business,"

Ms Dumor said. There are three Regional Offices within the MTN Group - the WECA regional office; the South East Africa

(SEA) regional office; and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region= al office. The MTN Group recorded 108 million subscribers at the close of September 30, 2009, out of which the

WECA region made a very significant contribution. In Ghana MTN is the market leader, commanding some eight million out= of the close to 15 million mobile phone

subscribers in the country, representing over 54 per cent market share. The MTN Group is a global sponsor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup slated for June in South Africa.