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Angolan President Joao Lourenco has canceled a mobile phone license awarded to a startup little known for "non-compliance," said his office Thursday.
The local company Telstar was granted a license last week allowing it to operate the country's fourth-largest mobile network, valued at $ 120 million (106 million euros), against 26 other local and international companies.
The call for tenders will be reopened, said a statement from the presidency.
Telstar was established only in January 2018. Among its shareholders include Army General Manuel Joao Carneiro and entrepreneur Antonio Cardoso Mateus.
According to the Angolan weekly Expansao, the company reportedly has links with Mundo Telecomunicaçoes, an operator owned by several former ministers or advisers to former president José Eduardo dos Santos.
The profitable mobile telecommunications sector is currently shared between two private companies, Movicel and Unitel, the main operator in the country.
Isabel dos Santos, the eldest daughter of the former president, considered the richest woman in Africa, holds a majority stake in Unitel, while her half-sister, Welwitschia dos Santos, holds a stake in Movicel.
A third operator, the public company Angola Telecom, partially privatized, recently tried to break into the sector.
Lourenco came to power in 2018 after pledging to clean up the endemic graft of Angola, to fight against nepotism and revive its apathetic economy.
It opens the telecommunications sector as part of plans to boost the economy of the second-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, struggling to recover from the impact of the sharp drop in prices of crude in 2014.
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