MTN Ghana looks poised soon to overtake MTN Group’s home market of South Africa as the second largest by service revenue behind Nigeria, further shifting the group’s centre of gravity to West Africa.

In the group’s quarterly update for the three months to end September, published on Monday, it said MTN South Africa generated R32.7-billion year to date in service revenue for the three-month period ending 30 September, representing some 20% of the group total.

Ghana is only marginally behind this figure at R30.2-billion in service revenue year to date, accounting for 19% of the total.

Part of the growth in Ghana can be attributed to the strengthening of the Ghanaian cedi, but Ghana still far outperformed South Africa in constant currency terms.

“The macroeconomic environment showed relative stability and improvement in the period, which supported our performance in key markets, with more benign and abating inflation and greater stability in local exchange rates,” said MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita in commentary alongside the results. “In the larger markets, MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana spearheaded the service revenue performance.”

MTN South Africa reported revenue of R12.8-billion for the quarter. Although this is ahead of Ghana’s R9.6-billion over the same period, the South African operation shrank by 2.6% year on year while Ghana grew by a staggering 79.9% (including the favourable currency impact).

Already more profitable

Although Ghana generates lower revenue compared to South Africa, it is a more profitable operation for the group. Ebitda margin – a measure of operating margin – for the third quarter of 2025 for Ghana stood at 58%, outpacing the South African operation by 23 percentage points. MTN South Africa’s Ebitda fell by 4.8%, with the Ebitda margin down by 0.4 percentage points to 35.8%.

In Ghana, blended average revenue per user (Arpu) rose by 21% in local currency to 64 cedi, up from 53 cedi a year ago. Comparatively, South Africa’s Arpu dropped 13% year on year to R77.

Read: Prepaid slump takes shine off Vodacom South Africa results

MTN’s Ghanaian operation has 30 million subscribers, compared to South Africa’s 40 million. Although both countries have grown their subscriber bases compared to the same time in 2024, Ghana’s growth outpaced South Africa on this metric, too: 6% vs 2%.

“MTN Ghana delivered service revenue growth driven by consistent execution of commercial strategies. The performance was broad based, underpinned by continued capex deployment to improve network quality, as well as expand coverage and capacity. MTN Ghana gained 1.8 million mobile customers, raising the total customer base to 30.5 million by the end of the period,” said MTN.

Another area where Ghana is shining compared to South Africa is in fintech. Fintech revenue in South Africa declined 5.1% while MTN Ghana’s fintech revenue increased by 36.8%.

The turnaround in macroeconomic conditions across the continent has had a positive impact on many of MTN’s operations, exposing muted growth and stagnation in South Africa.

MTN Nigeria continued to be a strong performer, growing revenue by 57% year on year in the third quarter. Mobile customers expanded to 85.4 million, while active data users reached 51.1 million. Demand for data remained robust, driving a 36.3% year-on-year increase in data traffic and data revenue growth of 73%.

Nigeria remained MTN’s biggest market by revenue, with its R44-billion contribution year-to-date representing 27% of the group total.

MTN said improving the performance of the South African operation, especially in the highly competitive prepaid segment, is one of its key operational goals. Meanwhile, fintech growth in Ghana is seen as a strong driver of growth.

“Our focus at MTN South Africa is to recover the performance of the prepaid segment, while we continue the work to sustain the strong momentum in MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana, as well as the turnarounds we are seeing in other markets within our footprint.

Read: MTN SA posts solid post-paid gains as prepaid stalls in fierce market battle

“MTN Ghana continues to focus on managing operational costs to protect margins and increase profitability while scaling its platforms. The expansion of our MoMo business and strengthening the entire fintech ecosystem remains a priority that underpins the sustained growth outlook of MTN Ghana,” said MTN. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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