South African-headquartered telecommunications group MTN has announced it is joining forces with Spain’s Telefónica Group, one of the world’s biggest telecoms operators, to focus on growth areas such as enterprise business and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.

The deal will see MTN joining the Telefónica Partners Programme, with the two companies set to “focus on capturing new opportunities in digital services”.

Telefónica has operations across Europe, Asia and the Americas, while MTN’s focus is on Africa and the Middle East.

The “strategic partnership agreement” will allow the companies to “work together to benefit from their joint scale, combined expertise and market access”, MTN said in a statement.

The Telefónica Partners Programme was launched in 2011 and already includes other operators in 35 markets in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.

“Under the terms of the agreement, both companies have agreed to work together to capture synergies in a number of strategic areas,” MTN said.

“Many of the initial areas are aiming to improve both companies’ stand in regards to enterprise customers, including services to multinational companies in each other’s footprint, collaboration in M2M and new digital products and services targeting the business-to-business segment.”

The companies will share best practices to capture the new industry opportunities, MTN added. “Both companies will also enter into discussions on how to engage effectively in international wholesale, devices and network/IT procurement.”

Newly appointed MTN group chief digital officer Herman Singh said the companies will work together on innovation and bringing new products to market.