MTN Group has spent three decades building a pan-African empire – but if you look closely at the map, its centre of gravity is skewed towards West Africa and Southern Africa.
On one side sits South Africa and on the other is a powerful West African bloc led by Nigeria and Ghana, the engines behind MTN’s recent strong financial results.
On the other, to the east and south of the continent, there’s a patchier presence: good businesses in Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and a few others – but little presence in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Ethiopia.
In a wide-ranging interview with the TechCentral Show to be published later this week, MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita made it clear he wants this imbalance addressed.
Over the next three to five years, MTN wants to be “a bit stronger than we currently are in South and East Africa in particular”, Mupita said.
That ambition opens fascinating questions: where, how – and at what price – does MTN expand next?
MTN today operates in 16 markets across Africa and the Middle East, with over 300 million subscribers. But the real weight sits in a handful of countries:
- South Africa remains the home market and strategic anchor.
- Nigeria is by far the biggest operation by subscribers and service revenue, and is now back in growth mode after a bruising currency shock.
- Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and other West & Central African markets round out the group’s powerful West African cluster.
In East Africa and Southern Africa, MTN has strong operating companies but none that individually has the strategic weight of the Nigerian or Ghanaian businesses.
In his interview with TechCentral, Mupita was clear about the logic of a renewed focus on the eastern side of the continent: East Africa offers “high-quality growth with a relatively lower risk profile” compared to some West African markets.
Mupita didn’t spell out his options explicitly. But he singled out Kenya as a “missing” market in MTN’s footprint. The group’s principal rival, Vodacom, is already a significant shareholder in Kenya’s dominant telecoms operator, Safaricom.
Read: MTN is cooking with gas in Nigeria
MTN has already executed a difficult, multi-year exit from most of its Middle Eastern markets and still intends to find a way out of its “frozen” minority stake in Iran when geopolitics and sanctions allow. The focus now is Africa – and making sure the risk and opportunity are spread more evenly across the continent, according to Mupita. — © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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