Ibrahim Mahama gets $70m Bombardier Global 6500 private jet

Ghanaian businessman Ibrahim Mahama has taken delivery of a new private jet, a Bombardier Global 6500, in a purchase that has set off a familiar mix of awe, applause and irritation across social media.

Footage circulating this week shows Mahama arriving at an airport with associates, then boarding the aircraft after a brief exchange with staff on the tarmac. The jet carries the bold “Dzata” branding associated with his earlier plane, reinforcing a personal motif that has become part status symbol and part signature.

Mahama, 55, is best known in Ghana as the founder of Engineers and Planners, a heavy equipment and mining services company that grew from contractor roots into a major West African player. He has also built a portfolio that includes Dzata Cement, placing him among the country’s most prominent industrialists and one of its most visible examples of privately built wealth.

The new aircraft is an upgrade in both range and reputation. The Global 6500 is an ultra long range business jet marketed for intercontinental travel and high end corporate use, and online commentary around the purchase has put the price in the tens of millions of dollars. Some posts cheered the acquisition as proof that Ghanaian enterprise can compete at the very top of the global business class. Others treated it as a provocation at a time when many households remain squeezed by the cost of living and unemployment worries.

The conversation follows Mahama’s earlier aviation spotlight. His first jet, also known by the Dzata name in public discussion, has been widely referenced in Ghana’s political arguments because it has been used at times by his older brother, President John Dramani Mahama, for travel. That history has turned Mahama’s planes into more than private transport, making them a recurring symbol in debates about privilege, power and optics.

Supporters argue the purchase is private money at work and a practical tool for a businessman whose operations span multiple locations. Critics counter that the visibility of such luxury inevitably lands in the public square in a country where politics and business are tightly intertwined.