MTN has a new golden goose
March 24th 2026
MTN Group is seeing a tectonic shift in its most important markets, with West African countries now driving its biggest earnings instead of South Africa.
The performance of MTN Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda helped the company achieve strong financial results in 2025. It declared a dividend of R5 per share, up 45% from the previous financial year.
In contrast, its South African business suffered its first revenue decline in more than a decade in 2025, which MTN said was due to fierce competition in the prepaid market and customers’ financial constraints.
Earnings before tax in South Africa fell by just over 10%, from R19.7 billion to R17.7 billion, in 2025. More striking was the revenue decline, down to R51 billion from R53 billion the year prior.
Group CEO Ralph Mupita said they were not overly concerned about South Africa’s performance, as plans were underway to arrest and reverse the decline.
“MTN SA is a tale of two stories. The one is that there are quite intense competitive pressures in the prepaid market, even when you look at Vodacom’s results,” he said.
“The prepaid market is about 52% of our total service revenue. MTN SA is doing very well in postpaid, very well in enterprise, and doing okay in wholesale. The issue is the prepaid market.”
Mupita said MTN was betting that some initiatives announced in the third quarter of last year would begin to bear fruit in the second half of the current year.
“Q1 and Q2 this year also remain challenging whilst these initiatives take effect. In the meantime, they are streaming decent cash up to the group,” he said.
Elsewhere on the continent, a remarkable shift took place in West Africa for MTN between 2024 and 2025, driven by improvements in the region’s macroeconomic conditions.
In its latest results, MTN Ghana reported R25 billion before tax, up from R14 billion in 2024, a 71% increase. Together, Nigeria and Ghana contributed 58% of the group’s pre-tax earnings in 2025.
Mupita said the group will now remain focused on maintaining its performance in MTN Nigeria, MTN Ghana, and MTN Uganda.
“Macroeconomic conditions improved in 2025 in our key markets, featuring more stable local currencies, as well as moderating inflation and fuel prices,” he added.
“This supported better overall consumer health in markets, which spurred MTN’s commercial performance and ability to drive cost control within the business.”
As the currency crisis passed, Nigerians cleared the rubble and demanded data, with MTN, the largest player in the market, more than happy to help.
Data revenues for MTN Nigeria surged 74.2%, the largest contributor to the business’s service revenue.
Active data subscriptions in Nigeria grew by 11.6%, while smartphone penetration rose to 66.1%, “reflecting the rising demand for high-speed connectivity.”
Data traffic in Nigeria rose by 84.6%, with MTN saying that the results “underscore the effectiveness of MTN Nigeria’s accelerated network investments.”
Bouncing back from the worst loss in a decade
| Entity | Metric | 2024 | 2025 | Year-on-Year change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MTN South Africa | Revenue | R53 billion | R51 billion | -3.7% |
| Earnings before tax (EBT) | R19.7 billion | R17.7 billion | -10.15% | |
| MTN Nigeria | Earnings before tax (EBT) | R16 billion | R32 billion | 103.4% |
| MTN Ghana | Earnings before tax (EBT) | R14 billion | R25 billion | 78.6% |
| MTN Group | Revenue | R188 billion | R227 billion | 20.7% |
| Net Profit/Loss | -R10.9 billion | R27 billion | 345.5% |
In 2024, the group reported sustained losses across its markets, with Nigerian earnings shrinking by 56.7%. Ghana, at the same time, posted relatively meagre growth of just over 9%.
At the time, Nigeria, which is the most populous country in Africa and a traditionally fallow telecoms market, faced severe headwinds, driven by a nearly 97% devaluation of the naira at its worst.
This followed the Central Bank of Nigeria’s decision to free float the currency in the middle of 2023. Mupita supported the decision at the time, saying it would be short-term pain for long-term gain.
The final outcome for MTN was a group net loss of R11 billion, its largest since 2010, on R188 billion in revenues for 2024.
Group earnings in Nigeria before tax rose to R32 billion in 2025, compared to R16 billion the year prior — a 103.4% increase.
Of its upcoming R38.5 billion capital expenditure investment, the company says it will accelerate further investments in MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana in particular “to support stronger growth.”
This shows the shift in MTN’s priorities, as it moves to invest heavily in reinforcing its newfound golden goose.
MTN’s company-wide push into AI
MTN has also revealed it is moving forward with plans to build new data centres in Nigeria and South Africa to support its push into Artificial Intelligence (AI).
“MTN Digital Infrastructure continued to advance its data centre strategy, laying the groundwork for an expanded AI-enabled rollout plan to support accelerating AI, cloud, and enterprise demand,” it stated.
In the first quarter of 2025, the company conducted comprehensive market research to find which countries would be best suited for the new facilities.
Nigeria and South Africa were confirmed as priority markets for “greenfield developments,” meaning the company is looking to establish facilities from scratch.
South Africa is Africa’s data centre capital, with Data Centre Map listing 62 different facilities in the country from several firms, both local and international. It is the most out of any African nation.
MTN said it has already “shortlisted key strategic partners with whom negotiations are progressing on co-investment structures and operating models,” without revealing the partners.
The company said it enters 2026 with a clear strategy for a competitive, scalable data centre platform “that will underpin long-term Digital Infrastructure growth and continental demand.”
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