MTN Group on Wednesday unpacked its Ambition 2030 strategy under the banner “one MTN, three platforms” – with targets to triple its fibre network, grow fintech 13x and double data usage.
Ambition 2030, MTN’s new five-year strategy, is built around three platforms – connectivity, fintech and digital infrastructure – with AI threaded through all three.
“Thirty years ago, everyone said mobile phones were too expensive for Africa,” group CEO Ralph Mupita told investors at MTN’s capital markets day on Wednesday. “Then came prepaid and it was a leapfrog moment for connectivity in Africa. This era of foundational AI technology is another leapfrog opportunity for the continent.”
Mupita anchored the strategy in six structural growth opportunities:
- Africa’s youthful, fast-growing population;
- Data acceleration on the back of rising smartphone penetration;
- Home connectivity;
- A growing enterprise market;
- Untapped financial inclusion; and
- Generative AI, which McKinsey estimates could unlock up to US$100-billion/year in economic value across Africa.
By 2030, MTN expects sub-Saharan Africa’s population to grow by more than 150 million people, mobile access to expand by more than 200 million and financial inclusion to deepen by more than 100 million adults.
The group enters the new cycle on a strong Ambition 2025 scorecard, reporting a total shareholder return of 315%, return on equity up from 17% to 25.6% and holding-company leverage cut from 2.2x to 1.3x. It now counts 313 million subscribers across 19 markets, 176 million active data subscribers, 67 million monthly active MoMo (mobile money) users, R219-billion in service revenue and a 45% Ebitda margin. Mupita said share buybacks would begin no later than the fourth quarter of 2026, with an estimated R6-billion to be executed before year-end.
Connectivity
Group chief of commercial, strategy and transformation Selorm Adadevoh set out the connectivity platform under three headings – scale data, accelerate home and empower enterprises – and was candid that voice, still MTN’s flagship at around 30% of revenue, will shrink as a share of the mix.
MTN is targeting 40-50 million new mobile users and 60-70 million new active data users by 2030, with data consumption doubling from 14GB per user per month and data alone climbing past 50% of group revenue. Fewer than 30% of people in sub-Saharan Africa currently access the internet, and even where MTN has coverage a 65% usage gap remains – which Adadevoh wants to close by working with device makers on cheaper smartphones.
On home connectivity – a 70-90 million home market opportunity – MTN aims to grow from 2.8 million homes connected in the first quarter of 2026 to more than 20 million by 2030, lifting penetration from 6% to roughly 30% via fixed-wireless access (around 60%) and fibre to the home (40%). Content is central, anchored by new pan-African streaming service called MTN One TV, pitched below Netflix on price with a focus on local content – entering a market whose harsh economics recently claimed Showmax.
Fintech
Group fintech CEO Serigne Dioum delivered perhaps the boldest target of the day, arguing Africa’s fintech revenue pool will grow 13-fold by 2030. MoMo generates R28.8-billion in fintech revenue across 14 markets, processes $500-billion over 23.3 billion transactions a year and has 69.5 million monthly active users. The opportunity, he argued, is wide open: more than 90% of payments on the continent are still in cash, only 4% of adults have access to formal credit, and just 1% invest in stocks.
By 2030 MTN wants to lift advanced services – lending, remittance, insurance and wealth – from 34% to above 50% of fintech revenue, underpinned by a partnership with Alipay+ to build a “super app”. Nigeria, where 92% of payments are cash, was singled out as the market MTN most needs to crack after earlier licensing setbacks.
Digital infrastructure
Mazen Mroué, CEO of MTN’s digital infrastructure unit, described infrastructure as “a growth engine for MTN towards 2030” across three pillars – fibre, data centres and towers. Africa, he said, has 18% of the world’s population but only about 0.02% of its fibre.
MTN wants to triple the size of its fibre network from 140 000km, double subsea broadband capacity, lift greenfield data centre capacity from 80MW to 150MW and consolidate roughly 30 000 towers. The platform is targeting 7-10% annual revenue growth at a 50-55% Ebitda margin. MTN has also taken a stake in a global AI-RAN consortium alongside Nvidia, Nokia, Cisco and others to host AI workloads at the network edge.
The Vodacom contrast
MTN’s renewed fintech ambition sets up a sharpening contest with Vodacom, still the larger financial services operator on the continent. The approaches diverge: Vodacom runs consumer-facing super apps – VodaPay in South Africa and M-Pesa elsewhere – and is leaning into wealth management through M-Pesa’s East African stronghold, whereas MTN is consolidating behind a single MoMo app and betting on remittances, bank-tech lending and the bundling of fintech with connectivity and infrastructure under one strategy.
Which model proves the more durable will be a defining question for African fintech this decade. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
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