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Globacom Chairman and Africa�s leading business icon, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr. has been adjudged as the Telecoms Man of the Year 2009 at the prestigious Nigerian Information Technology and Telecommunications Award (NITTA) ceremony held in Lagos. The honour comes on the trail of his major contributions towards the growth of the telecoms industry in Africa, including the fast roll out beyond the borders of Nigeria where Glo started. The company, which deployed a submarine cable from Lagos through other major African countries to Europe and America, has built a robust and innovative pan-Africa network. At a colourful event held at the Grand Ball Room of Eko Hotel and attended by the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Eng. Ernest Ndukwe, the organizers said, �Dr. Adenuga is noted for doing things that people thought were impossible.� He was praised for always breaking new grounds in telecommunication investments and technology acquisition. While applauding Dr. Adenuga as the Man of the Year, NITTA noted that the businessman extraordinaire had made Globacom, the first telecoms firm in the region to commercially launch the 3G network and the first company to lay an undersea cable across Africa with extension to the U.S. Dr. Adenuga, it added, had taken Glo to Cote d�Ivoire, Ghana and the Republic of Benin, thereby setting the tempo of competition in the region, which would automatically raise the quality of service to international standard. The panel of judges for the NITTA award, made up of eminent Nigerians from the telecoms industry, law, print and broadcast media and led by Dr. Tom Adaba, a former Director-General of the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission, acknowledged that Globacom is a one-stop telecommunications solutions provider and the ultimate national operator. Believed in several quarters to be probably Africa�s richest man, Dr. Adenuga has revolutionised the telecoms industry in Africa through Globacom. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an agency of the United Nations Organisation (UNO) in 2004, credited Globacom with the massive penetration of telephony in Nigeria due to its introduction of the Per Second Billing system and the crash in call tariff. Mr. Adenuga brought a lot of verve and novelty into the telecoms industry and grew Globacom at an unprecedented pace, making it the fastest growing network in Asia, Middle East and Africa. He gave Nigeria, and indeed Africa, a truly sophisticated and user-friendly network, Riding on the then 2.5G state-of-the-art platform and later the 3.5G network, Globacom rolled out one Value Added Service (VAS) after another. From multimedia messaging to Glo mobile internet, Vehicle Tracking, Blackberry and 3G services, Globacom has been in the forefront of introducing unique VAS onto the Nigerian telecommunications industry, earning in the process, the sobriquet of Nigeria�s most innovative network. It is this sophistication and pocket-friendly network that Mr. Adenuga is exporting to other African countries. In the estimation of subscribers, he has indeed given the continent a truly African brand. His exploit in the telecommunications sector attracted national interest in 2001 when he won the bid for a GSM license but the frequency allocated to him and his Communication Investment Limited (CIL) was legally encumbered as the government allocated the same frequency to another network. He lost $20 million in the process. When all hope seemed lost, a new window of opportunity, which was the Second National Operator License emerged. This was going to give him a composite of fixed, fixed-wireless, broadband, Gateway as well as the GSM license, which he had earlier lost. He went for it and again, his tenacity paid off. Acclaimed as one of Africa�s biggest employers of labour, Dr. Adenuga has massive investments in other lucrative sectors of the African economy, including banking, oil & gas and real-estate.