MTN Group has posted a historic $7.18 billion in service revenue for the first half of 2026. That is R115.3 billion. Nigeria and Ghana are the biggest reasons why. The pan-African telecom giant grew revenue by 17.5% in constant currency terms. Meanwhile, its home market, South Africa, kept struggling.
MTN’s Nigerian business led the charge. Service revenue in Nigeria climbed 25.7% in constant currency. That is well above the group average. The Nigerian unit also added 7.5 million new subscribers during the period. As a result, its total customer base grew to 92.2 million.
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That growth came despite a rocky patch. Nigeria’s consumer watchdog, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, forced MTN to suspend its airtime lending service in April. This suspension alone cost the business close to 50 billion naira in revenue. Still, data revenue in Nigeria jumped 38.2%. Digital services also rose 20.9%. Together, these gains more than made up the difference.
Ghana told a similar story, but with even sharper numbers. MTN Ghana’s service revenue surged 32.3% in constant currency. Its EBITDA margin hit an industry-leading 61.8%. Falling inflation helped a lot here. Ghana’s inflation rate eased by 16.6 percentage points to 3.8% during the period. So consumers had more room to spend on data and digital services. In fact, data revenue in Ghana jumped 47.3%. It now makes up close to 59% of the country’s service revenue.
Meanwhile, South Africa, MTN’s home base, lagged behind the rest of the group. Total revenue there fell 1.6% year on year. Service revenue managed only a modest 1.5% increase. The South African market remains highly competitive. Household budgets there are still tight. Because of this, MTN’s subscriber count in South Africa slipped slightly, down to 39.5 million.
This gap between MTN’s African growth markets and its struggling home base is becoming a defining feature of the company’s strategy. Group CEO Ralph Mupita and his team have leaned harder into markets like Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Uganda, and Cote d’Ivoire. All of these markets posted strong growth during the half. Today, the company serves more than 317 million customers across 19 African markets. Clearly, its diversification strategy is paying off.
Profitability also improved sharply. Group EBITDA rose 24.4% in constant currency to roughly $3.5 billion. The same markets driving revenue growth also drove this earnings growth. Nigeria’s EBITDA margin expanded by 5.3 percentage points to 55.9%. This made it the single largest contributor to group earnings, ahead of both Ghana and South Africa.
MTN also announced a share buyback programme worth up to 6 billion rand. This is part of its broader plan to return between 40% and 60% of free cash flow to shareholders. Looking ahead, the company is targeting continued double-digit growth in Nigeria. It expects even steeper expansion in Ghana for the rest of 2026. South Africa, however, is expected to post only low single-digit gains.
For now, the results confirm a trend that has been building for a while. MTN’s future growth is increasingly tied to West Africa, not South Africa. Nigeria and Ghana together are proving that Africa’s fast-growing digital economies can carry a continental telecom giant, even when its home market falters.
