MTN wants half of South Africa on its network by 2025

MTN aims to grow its active data customer base to between 25 to 30 million South Africans by 2025 from its current base of 19 million at the end of 2022. 

MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy envisions tremendous growth for the pan-African giant’s South African operations. 

MTN South Africa’s chief sustainability and corporate affairs officer Jacqui O’Sullivan told Daily Investor that the company is committed to building the country’s largest and most valuable platform business. 

This rests on a scalable connectivity and infrastructure business – mobile and fixed access networks in the consumer, enterprise and wholesale segments. 

However, the company is cognisant of the challenging economic environment, which has forced it to limit the growth of operating costs and ensure its capital expenditure is more efficient. 

O’Sullivan also said MTN is looking to leverage partnerships in South Africa to drive its business growth. 

One such example is its partnership with FNB Connect. 

FNB and MTN announced in June that they are teaming up to provide better telecommunication and internet services to customers who use FNB Connect, FNB’s mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). 

MTN’s ambition to grow its customer base to half of South Africa is underpinned by four strategic priorities:

• Build the largest and most valuable platforms
• Drive industry-leading connectivity operations
• Create shared value
• Accelerate portfolio transformation

Apart from adding millions of customers to its network, MTN has plans for growth in other areas of its business. 

In 2022, MTN South Africa generated R5.5 billion in revenue from its Wholesale Business Unit. It expects this revenue to surpass R7 billion by 2025. 

The growth from this unit will be driven by the onboarding of Cell C’s entire network and the conclusion of its roaming migration agreement with Telkom. 

O’Sullivan said the company’s aim is to become a “network of networks”. 

MTN South Africa’s fintech offering, MoMo, currently has 1.2 million users, which the company expects to grow to between 3 to 5 million by 2025. 

The company also expects its home broadband offering to reach over 1 million users by 2025 from just over 700,000 in 2022.