Sierra Leone’s National Commission for Privatisation signed a three-year management contract with Management and Development International Co. of Beirut to run the state-owned telecommunications company, Sierratel.

“Sierratel still remains 100 percent government-owned,” Madonna Thompson, head of the commission’s utilities section, said in an interview in Freetown, the capital, today. “All the structures still remain, it’s just that the day-to-day operations to turn around the business will be done by a management contractor.”

The talks over the contract lasted for nine months, Thompson said. Sierratel has monopoly over landlines in the West African nation and also provides mobile-phone and internet services.  

To contact the reporter on this story: Silas Gbandia in Freetown via Accra at ebowers1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emily Bowers at ebowers1@bloomberg.net