There is something striking buried inside MTN Group’s 2025 financials that most people scrolled past. Ghana, a market with less than half of Nigeria’s subscriber base, handed the Ghanaian government more money in taxes than Nigeria did. Not slightly more. Significantly more. And understanding why tells you everything about how currency, policy, and economic stability quietly shape the fortunes of Africa’s biggest telecoms giant.
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MTN Ghana paid $984 million, equivalent to GHS10.5 billion, in direct and indirect taxes to the government in 2025, cementing its place as MTN Group’s single largest tax contributor on the continent. MTN Nigeria, by comparison, contributed the equivalent of around $642 million in taxes over the same period. That gap, roughly 47 percent, is not the result of Ghana generating more raw revenue. Nigeria still towers over Ghana in total earnings. The real explanation is far more telling.
MTN Nigeria closed 2025 with 87.3 million subscribers and generated roughly $3.77 billion in service revenue, making it the group’s primary growth engine. MTN Ghana, with just 31.2 million subscribers, brought in far less in headline numbers. But headline numbers only tell part of the story. What matters is what survives after currency conversion, inflation, and operational costs are applied.
Even after the Nigerian Communications Commission approved a 50 percent tariff hike in early 2025, MTN Nigeria’s average revenue per user reached just $3.02, ranking twelfth among all MTN markets globally. Ghana, by contrast, generated $5.60 per user, making it MTN’s most profitable market by that measure.
The naira is central to this story. While it strengthened to around the N1,400 per dollar range in 2025 from N1,500 the year prior, it remains far off the below-N1,000 average it held before Nigeria’s foreign exchange crisis began compressing dollar-denominated returns. Every naira earned in Lagos loses value the moment it is converted. Ghana’s cedi, despite its own history of volatility, has been comparatively stable, allowing MTN to preserve earnings in real terms.
MTN Ghana’s EBITDA margins climbed to 60.1 percent in 2025, well ahead of MTN Nigeria’s recovered margin of 52.7 percent, with profit after tax surging 55.9 percent. Higher profitability means a higher taxable base, which directly explains the larger tax bill. Ghana’s government effectively earns more from MTN because MTN earns more per dollar of business conducted there.
Together, Nigeria and Ghana accounted for roughly 90 percent of MTN Group’s total profit after tax in 2025, underscoring just how dominant the West African corridor has become for the group’s overall financial performance.
The lesson here is not that Nigeria matters less. It matters enormously to MTN’s subscriber scale and long-term growth story. But scale without currency stability is a leaky bucket. Ghana is smaller, yet more efficient, more predictable, and currently more valuable per user. Until Nigeria resolves the structural pressures weighing on the naira and real margins, Ghana will continue to punch well above its weight in what it delivers to both MTN’s bottom line and the government’s treasury.
