Category: Media releases
MTN GlobalConnect announced an important step in the evolution of its business through the unveiling of its new name and positioning – Bayobab. The brand reveal took place at International Telecommunications Week (ITW) Conference in Washington DC, attended by over 6000 delegatesfrom acrossthe digital wholesale telecoms community. The new identity, Bayobab, represents the company’s strategic transformation journey to connect Africa with open next-gen digital solutions through its two distinct businesses, Bayobab Fibre and Bayobab Communication Platforms.
MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita said, “Building the largest and most valuable platforms is part of our Ambition 2025 strategic priorities. The brand change from MTN GlobalConnect to Bayobab reflects the change underway to position the business as a world class, Africa-focused open-access digital infrastructure platform serving not just MTN but other third parties as customers. We will also bring strategic partners into the business over time who will provide skills and capital to support and accelerate the growth of this business.”
Inspired by the Baobab tree – which many recognise as the “tree of life”, Bayobab is the enabler of the digital connectivity value chain across the African continent. The rebrand is the first step in the business transformation journey since announcing MTN Group’s Ambition 2025 strategy to structurally separate its fibre business, targeted for completion by 2024. This will enable Bayobab to unlock value within the business, attract strategic partners, and comply with local regulations across its key markets.
Commenting on the rebrand, Frédéric Schepens, Bayobab Group CEO, said: “As a young entrepreneurial business delivering value through open next-gen digital solutions, we believe Bayobab best encompasses our vision of connecting Africa and ensures we add meaningful value across the continent.”
“Our strategy has borne much fruit, as evidenced by our performance and delivery. We are well-positioned to open a significant digital doorway that bridges Africa’s digital divide to connect communities,” Schepens added.
Looking ahead, Bayobab will continue investing in the business and its people to achieve its strategic goals. As Bayobab, we will remain committed to forging strong global partnerships that connect the unconnected, deepening internet adoption to accelerate Africa’s vision for digital transformation.
Africa’s super app ayoba today announced the achievement of a significant milestone – surpassing the 25 million monthly active users’ mark as we celebrate our fourth anniversary.
This is up from 20 million monthly active users in December 2022. The platform is available globally but has a strong a focus on the African continent. Among key territories are Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda and The Republic of Congo.
“25 million is a significant milestone to pass on our fourth birthday,” says CEO Burak Akinci. “Our journey has been transformative, and the positive response from our users fuels our drive for innovation. Our users are at the heart of our progress, and we are grateful for their support.”
So far in 2023, ayoba has focused on enhancing communication and content features. These have been well received, with a 35% increase in messages, and a 16% increase in both stories and VoIP calls. Users have viewed 88 million cards across all channels, in topics such as entertainment, education, food, fashion and more.
“The first four months of 2023 was a period of significant growth and development for ayoba. We have improved our socialisation and messaging functionalities, enhanced our microapp experience and added many more features,” Akinci says.
The introduction of the new ‘explore’ landing page marks a significant advance for ayoba’s Android version. This page, currently in pilot phase, will be rolled out to all key territories in the future. It brings a simplified design for easy navigation through ayoba’s curated high-quality content and highlights our themes to our users.
The microapp’s vertical has also seen significant evolution in Q1 at ayoba, as a direct shortcut to the vertical has been added on the bottom navigation bar. This section, referred to as an evolving ‘ecosystem for small African business’ – and some larger ones – allows service providers easy access to the existing ayoba user base with minimal effort. The most popular micro-apps currently are ‘live scores’ (allowing users to get the latest sports scores), ‘ayoba gifting’, ‘video play apps’, sports, and shopping.
Born out of a partnership with MTN, ayoba is available on all networks. In certain participating territories, users on ayoba receive complimentary daily data, amplifying its value proposition*. ayoba’s growth trajectory has it on track to achieve 100 million monthly active users by 2025 in line with MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy.
*VoIP and video call are not zero rated for MTN subscribers
MTN Group is pleased to announce the release of our suite of annual reports for 2022. The Integrated Report, the Sustainability Report, the Transparency Report and the Tax Report provide details of our work in the year to deliver on our purpose and our plans to build the MTN of tomorrow.
“2022 was a challenging year for everyone, everywhere, and was characterised by increased macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility,” says MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita. “But through the challenges, we stayed focused on our Ambition 2025, which is to provide leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress, and pursued opportunities to extend digital and financial inclusion for society at large.”
Our Integrated Report is our primary communication to all stakeholders. It aims to provide a holistic view of the Group in order to enable them to make an informed assessment of our strategic performance and prospects and the value we create and preserve through our business activities. It shows the connectivity between our strategic priorities; our material matters; the six capitals; the UN’s SDGs; our stakeholders; and the risks we face and the actions we are taking to mitigate them.
It contains the key focus areas of each of our board committees in the year and their plans for the year ahead. The Integrated Report also spells out our governance structures, policy and processes, as well as our remuneration policy and how we link rewards to performance.
In the Sustainability Report, we provide details of our environmental, social and governance performance and commitments. This is in a world that is lifting expectations of all organisations to operate responsibly, with integrity and a focus on the well-being of communities and the planet.
“This year, our Sustainability Report incorporates the GSMA’s new industry-specific ‘ESG Metrics for Mobile’ disclosures. It shows how we are positioning MTN at the centre of Africa’s transformation to improve the quality of life of Africans and to be economically empowering and environmentally sustainable,”says Mupita.
It details our progress in establishing MTN as a responsible, transparent and sustainable organisation, building on our climate disclosures and the work we are doing to strengthen data privacy and security, minimise the gender pay gap and uphold digital human rights.
Our Transparency Report provides insight into how MTN approaches digital human rights strategy and practice. “We believe all people should be able to communicate freely; to access and exchange information responsibly; and to enjoy privacy and security when using digital communication and data,” says Mupita.
Our voluntary Tax Report explains our tax affairs, shows our contribution to the socioeconomic development of our nationstate hosts, and that our total tax contribution in the year amounted to more than R51 billion, up from more than R44 billion in 2021.
“The 2022 suits of reports outlines the progress we are making as a company and the contribution we are making to society more broadly, which we trust all our stakeholders will find useful,” says Mupita.
Read the reports here: https://bit.ly/41Lxben
MTN Group today announced the launch of its flagship MTN Skills Academy in Zambia, the first of its operations to roll out this initiative which is aimed at addressing the digital skills gap in Africa. First introduced at MWC in Kigali, the MTN Skills Academy is a free, online learning platform that will see MTN play its role to actively drive digital skills development and job creation across Africa and have at least 60% of youth and adults on our markets having at least a minimum level of proficiency in sustainable digital skills by 2025.
With a starting point and recognition that the Digital Skills Gap Index reports 12 of the world’s 20 countries with the weakest digital skills being in Africa, this online learning platform provides young people with access to world-class training and resources in digital and financial literacy, work readiness, mentorship, and job placement services. The MTN Skills Academy is delivered in line with the AU’s digital transformation strategy ambitions.
Speaking at the launch event, the Minister of Sports, Youth and Art, Hon Elvis Nkandu said, ”The launch of the MTN digital skills Academy is a significant milestone for Zambia’s digital development. The government’s commitment to promoting science, technology, and innovation in the education sector coupled with initiatives such as the MTN digital skills academy, underscores Zambia’s determination to equip its youth with the skills necessary to thrive in the digital era”.
A strategic priority of MTN Group’s Ambition 2025 strategy is to create shared value. In this instance, the launch of the MTN Skills Academy will enable the Group to leverage its operation to enable digital inclusion and transform lives in Africa through the provision of the much needed digital training to the communities within which it operates. This launch is further demonstration of the Company’s commitment to building a sustainable future for Africa by creating economic opportunities for young people and driving the growth of the digital economy on the continent.
“It is no secret that in order to be competitive in this rapidly changing world, digital proficiency is a necessity, ”said Nompilo Morafo, MTN Group Group’s Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer. “It is for this reason that we are thrilled to bring the MTN Skills Academy to Zambia, and to help young people across the country gain the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the digital economy. As a pan-African company, we are committed to driving growth and development across the continent, and through this investment, we are helping to create a more equitable and sustainable future for Africa.”
The International Finance Corporation reports that by 2030 approximately 230 million jobs will require digital skills, yet the continent is far behind in reaching these numbers. The MTN Skills Academy is designed to address this critical shortage. It will initially focus on offering online training in digital and financial skills, work readiness, mentorship, and job placement, with plans to expand to include in-person training and on-the-job training in the future.
The Academy is designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing it to respond to changing digital skills demands and provide young people with the training and resources they need to succeed in the digital economy. By continually evolving and improving the program, MTN can ensure that the academy remains a valuable resource for students and helps to bridge the digital skills gap in Africa.
The launch event for the MTN Skills Academy in Zambia took place on 25th of April, with a range of stakeholders and partners in attendance. Interested individuals residing in Zambia may access the courses and training programs offered by the academy by visiting the website and signing up.
MTN Group’s strategic priority to create shared value with ESG at the core was recognised in the latest Brand Finance awards, attracting the highest ‘sustainability perceptions value’ of all companies in the survey in which MTN retained the rank as South Africa’s most valuable brand.
Brand Finance’s ‘South Africa 100 2023’ assigned MTN a brand value of R74.3 billion, up 24% in the year and nearly double that of the country’s second most valuable brand. It said this was the twelfth time in the past thirteen years that MTN was the country’s most valuable brand. It gave MTN a ‘sustainability perceptions value’ of R8.6 billion.
Brand value is the net economic benefit that a brand owner would achieve by licensing the brand in the open market.
In the survey, Brand Finance said: “MTN’s brand value continued to grow in 2023, meaning that its value is now up 50% from its pre-pandemic level. This is an impressive statistic considering the difficult operating conditions and the complex geopolitical environment that the brand has been faced with.”
It said ‘sustainability’ was one specific brand attribute that was growing in significance in terms of driving overall brand value. “As well as being South Africa’s most valuable brand, MTN also has the highest sustainability perceptions value of any brand included in the South Africa 100 2023 ranking – ZAR8.6 billion. This indicates how much brand value MTN has tied up in sustainability perceptions (11.6%).”
MTN Group President and Chief Executive Officer Ralph Mupita said the survey results were an indicator of the work done to deliver on the Group’s strategic intent, which is Ambition 2025 strategic: Leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress.
“We are driven to extend digital and financial inclusion across our markets, and we thank all our stakeholders – from our subscribers, to our employees, to our nation state hosts and regulators – for their continued support. You inspire us to keep doing better together.”
MTN Group is delighted to announce the appointment of Abbad Reda as the new CEO for MTN Zambia, effective May 1, 2023, replacing Bart Hofker.
With more than 20 years of experience, Abbad has successfully delivered market share, revenue, and profit growth. Abbad joined MTN Group in 2002 and has held several senior positions, including Chief Information Officer for MTN Ghana, CEO for MTN Liberia, and is currently the CEO of MTN Afghanistan.
Abbad holds an Executive MBA from CEIBS and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer and Communication Engineering. He has also participated in MTN’s Global Advancement Program (GAP). He assumes the reins at MTN Zambia from current CEO, Bart Hofker, who has been an invaluable asset to the organization and is leaving MTN to pursue other ventures.
Ralph Mupita, Group President, and CEO of MTN Group, said, “I am pleased to announce the appointment of Abbad Reda as the new CEO for MTN Zambia and believe he will add immense value to the market. He will continue to support MTN Afghanistan, where he has been managing matters related to MTN’s orderly exit of the country. With over two decades of experience and a proven track record in driving growth, Abbad is well-equipped to lead MTN Zambia into its next phase of growth and development. I am confident that Abbad will build on the solid foundation laid by his predecessor and take the business to new heights. I thank Bart for his valuable contributions to the organization during his 7-year tenure at MTN and wish him all the best in his future endeavours.”
Following the signing of a five-year strategic partnership in September 2022, MTN and Microsoft are in the process of delivering a programme of work that will see the latest technologies deployed for the benefit of MTN’s customers, starting with South Africa and Nigeria.
The core of the programme will focus on migrating BSS and OSS applications to the Microsoft Azure cloud aiming to realise operational benefits and cost efficiencies. Work has already begun with the establishment of MTN Group Cloud Centre of Excellence and Project Nephos to migrate, carefully selected, business applications to Azure. MTN and Microsoft will work closely with Accenture who will be providing technology implementation, integration and support services to successfully enable the migration and operations of the targeted environments.
One of the cornerstone elements of the programme is the migration of EVA, MTN’s extensive core big data platform, to Azure. Beyond infrastructure optimisation, MTN will evolve further its common data model to enable use cases that bridge typical divides across network, IT and commercial domains taking advantage of native Azure capabilities, including machine learning and artificial intelligence.
MTN’s core belief is that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life. Through the partnership with Microsoft, with Project Nephos we have embarked on an extensive skills development program in cloud technologies, devsecops and data management. Hundreds of MTN employees in Nigeria and South Africa have already benefitted from the Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative (ESI) which provides hands-on technical training and certification in Microsoft Azure technologies; the program will run across multiple countries where MTN operates to maximise the impact of the partnership.
Project Nephos is built around the principle of delivering maximum value as early possible through selecting the most suitable applications to be migrated to Azure with a fixed migration cost and carefully designed operational costs. Working together with Microsoft and Accenture, MTN is taking a unique approach to the deployment of workloads to the public cloud seeking opportunities to improve customer experience and enhance organisational agility while pursuing cost transformation in a predictable and committed way. This approach has already enabled MTN to complete a proof of concept for the world’s first 5G standalone core network solution deployed in Microsoft’s Azure public cloud in just a few weeks!
“Our strategic partnership with Microsoft will enable us to transform the way we deliver products and services to our customers. We will bring the power of cloud computing to life driving development and innovation with speed, flexibility and predictable investments and operations. We remain focused on nurturing the digital skills within MTN and in the societies we operate in and building digital platforms to drive digital transformation across Africa and the Middle East” says Nikos Angelopoulos, MTN Group Chief Information Officer.
“Harnessing the power of MTN, Microsoft and Accenture, we will be working closely together to build the next wave of compressed digital transformation across the continent. We see this program becoming a global standard in the industry for years to come” Nitesh Singh Communications, Media and Technology Lead for Accenture Africa.
MTN, Africa’s largest mobile network operator, has conducted a proof of concept for a first-of-its-kind 5G Stand Alone Core fully deployed in Microsoft Azure. MTN is working with Microsoft to accelerate digital and cloud transformation to help drive Africa’s growth.
The proof of concept was conducted with all of the 5G Stand Alone Core elements including control plane, user plane and management nodes, deployed fully in the South Africa Azure Region. The project allowed MTN to experience the benefits associated with deploying a core network in Azure including fast deployment time (days vs months) and ease of scale. The learnings drive a paradigm shift in network planning considering sustainability, commercial models, automation and disaster recovery.
“Being one of the first in the world to conduct this proof of concept demonstrates MTN’s desire to keep pushing the boundaries of technological innovation that delivers value to our shareholders,” says Amith Maharaj, MTN Group Chief Technology Officer.
5G has the ability to transform business and livelihoods beyond simple connectivity in Africa. The key lies in the ultra-fast end-to-end communication capacity it enables. It will enable many industries such as education, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, agriculture and mining to be more efficient.
Executing on the PACE technology strategy, MTN Group is ramping up its rollout of 5G sites targeting a population coverage of 10%-30% in the medium term.
“Microsoft is equipping industry leaders with ubiquitous computing power to help them realize the potential of 5G networks. With Azure, MTN can enrich its digital capabilities and enable organizations across industries to bring modern high-performance applications to their customers faster,” said Tad Brockway, Corporate Vice President Azure for Operators, Microsoft.
MTN will use the PoC as a stepping stone to drive further innovation in the cloud domain as part of its PACE technology strategy to accelerate the execution of its Ambition 2025 and drive industry leading connectivity operations through technology platforms that are second to none.
As our Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita has said, “Africa will surprise on 5G.” The continent stands at the cusp of an industrial evolution (Industry 4.0) enabled by 5G. Never has a technology been so eagerly anticipated.
MTN Group today reported a strong 2022 financial performance, including an expansion in return on equity to 23.4% and a 10% increase in the dividend to 330 cents per share, in a challenging macroeconomic environment of elevated inflation across our 19 markets.
In the year to 31 December 2022, total subscribers rose 6% to 289 million, with data subscribers growing by more than 12% to 137 million and Mobile Money users up by 21% to 69 million.
Demonstrating good operational execution and ongoing strategic delivery, in constant currency terms the Group reported a 15.3% increase in service revenue to R194 billion and maintained a stable margin on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of 44%. EBITDA increased by 14.3% to R90 billion. It was supported by our expense efficiency programme which yielded R2.7 billion in savings, mostly in Nigeria and South Africa.
“The structurally higher demand for data and fintech services was sustained, with data traffic and fintech transaction volumes increasing by around a third each,” said MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita. “To support this, we invested more than R38 billion in our network, IT and platform infrastructure – an increase of 17%, while at the same time reducing consumers’ average cost to communicate by nearly 23%.”
The network investment expanded access to broadband services to almost 88% of the population (from 83% in 2021) in our markets as we focused on rural rollout, extending digital inclusion across Africa. Our contribution to society also included income taxes of approximately R14 billion paid to nation states in the year.
Alongside the increase in capital investment, our proactive commercial, expense efficiency, supply chain, network and financial resilience interventions helped alleviate the impact on results of a tough operating environment. This included – across markets – high inflation and interest rates, weak local currencies, pressure on disposable income and in South Africa, the significant impact of severe loadshedding.
The performance of MTN South Africa was solid, with growth in service revenue of 3.6% to almost R41 billion and an EBITDA margin of 39.2%. Loadshedding impacted EBITDA by R695 million as the Opco incurred additional expenditure to meet the requirements of power, security and repairs, the latter due to the vandalism of sites.
On MTN South Africa, Mupita said: “We are encouraged by the performance of the business and the focus on network resilience. Amid unprecedented loadshedding and the intensified need for back-up power in the second half of 2022, MTN South Africa invested significantly to secure network resilience.”
He added: “With the state of disaster regulations gazetted, South Africa now has a unique opportunity to accelerate efforts to secure the resilience of critical national infrastructure such as telecommunications. Government and business must jointly seize this moment and act decisively to deal with the quadruple crises of energy; logistics; crime and corruption; and youth unemployment. Inaction risks South Africa being a failed nation state.”
Across our markets, we continued to execute on our four strategic priorities. To build the largest and most valuable platforms, we expanded our fintech ecosystem and made progress in separating our fintech business from our GSM business, receiving offers for strategic minority investments into the MTN Group fintech structure. We anticipate completing the process to review offers and engage investors in May 2023.
To drive industry-leading connectivity operations, we increased voice, data and fintech revenue, rolled out more than 5 000km of fibre and invested in subsea cables.
To create shared value, we reduced our scope 1 and 2 emissions in pursuit of net zero by 2040. Diversity and inclusion remained central to our efforts: we achieved 40% women representation, moving closer to our 2030 target of gender parity.
We also accelerated portfolio transformation, recording proceeds from asset realisations of R12 billion and signing a share purchase agreement with a subsidiary of M1 Group Limited to acquire all our shares in MTN Afghanistan for a gross consideration of US$35 million.
Looking ahead, we remain focused on executing on our Ambition 2025 strategy and maintain our guidance for performance over the next three to five years, despite elevated macroeconomic risks in South Africa and Nigeria. Across our markets, in 2023 MTN plans to invest more than R37 billion in networks and platforms. Of this, we will spend R9 billion on the South African network.
MTN Group is pleased to announce the appointment of Marcin Waligora, Executive: Software Engineering with effect from 27 March 2023.
With more than 20 years of progressive experience, exceptional technical skills, and solid business acumen, Marcin joins MTN Group from Citigroup in Tampa, USA.
“As Executive: Software Engineering, Marcin will be responsible for defining, developing and executing our Software Engineering strategic programme to accelerate the PACE of Ambition 2025, and maintaining the long-term growth for delivering the software engineering on front-end customer experience layer systems, partnerships and integration points. He will also help achieve business agility, at scale, impacting a multiplier effect by bringing about positive impact in multiple Opcos and platforms, various product areas, and newer markets.” Said Mazen Mroué, Group Chief Technology and Information Officer
Over the past 15 years Marcin has been with Citigroup, holding various senior roles, including Engineering Manager and Technical Architect, Software Development Director and most recently, Global Head of Clearing Modernisation Technology. In the latter role, he was responsible for designing and delivering a 24/7 payment platform, among many other duties.
Marcin holds a Master’s of Science Degree in Advanced Software Engineering from the University College Dublin. He also holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from Warsaw University of Technology. Additionally, Marcin has numerous certifications, including an Advanced Scrum Master (A-CSM), Microsoft Specialist in Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions and MongoDB for Developers-10gen.