Twenty-five years after making the first mobile call on its network in Nigeria, MTN Nigeria is preparing for a future in which voice may no longer be the centre of its business.
The telecom operator is betting that its next phase of growth will come from artificial intelligence, financial technology, digital platforms and a new wave of connectivity.
The shift marks a major change for a company that built its Nigerian business around voice calls and SMS.
MTN now has 96 million customers and says it has invested about B1.6 trillion in capital expenditure over the past 18 months. It has also paid more than N620 billion in taxes and other payments during the period, according to Modupe Kadri, chief financial officer of MTN Nigeria.
Read also: 25 years, 92M connections: The infrastructure story behind MTN Nigeria’s rise
The scale of the investment shows the size of the infrastructure challenge facing Nigeria’s largest telecom operator: the more Nigerians move online, the more capital MTN needs to keep its network ahead of demand.
But the company is also trying to ensure that it does not remain only a connectivity provider.
“The good thing is that MTN has brought that technology to Nigerians. Over the past 25 years, MTN has been leading the way,” Kadri said, describing the evolution from traditional voice calls to voice-over-data services such as WhatsApp and other digital applications.
The company’s strategy is now moving beyond the traditional telecom model.
From voice to platforms
The first 25 years of mobile telecommunications in Nigeria were largely about connecting people.
The next phase is increasingly about what happens after they connect. That means mobile money, digital financial services, entertainment, artificial intelligence, cloud and data services, as well as the infrastructure needed to support businesses that increasingly depend on digital transactions.
For MTN, this creates a potentially larger market than traditional telecommunications.
FinTech is particularly important because the company’s network gives it access to a large customer base and a distribution platform that reaches far beyond Nigeria’s major cities.
Kadri said the regulatory environment that initially slowed the growth of FinTech has changed, creating more room for new financial services and digital platforms.
“What our customers can look forward to in the FinTech space is greater use of artificial intelligence and other technologies to deliver more benefits to customers,” he said.
The opportunity is significant. A telecom company that can move customers from buying airtime and data to using financial, entertainment and other digital services can generate revenue from more parts of a customer’s daily life.
That is the strategic logic behind MTN’s shift toward a platform business.
AI becomes the next layer
Artificial intelligence is also moving into the centre of MTN’s strategy. The company sees AI not only as a consumer technology but as a tool for improving its own operations.
MTN executives said the company is examining how AI can improve customer understanding, segmentation and targeting, while also helping it identify customer behaviour and improve the efficiency of its operations.
That could become increasingly important as the cost of running telecom networks rises. Instead of simply adding more infrastructure whenever traffic increases, operators can use data and AI to understand where demand is growing, which customers need particular services and where network resources should be deployed.
For MTN, AI therefore becomes both a customer-facing technology and an internal efficiency tool.
The company is also looking beyond today’s network technology.
Kadri said nobody can predict exactly where technology will be in another 25 years, but companies need to remain part of the current technology stack to be able to take advantage of what comes next.
“Technology evolves very quickly, and it is driven by use cases. As human beings and as businesses, we continue to look for ways to drive efficiency, do things better, interact better and connect better,” Kadri averred.
The network remains the biggest bet
Despite the push into AI and FinTech, MTN’s future still depends on the network. Its customer base has grown to about 96 million, while data consumption has changed the economics of telecoms.
Customers no longer use mobile networks mainly to make calls. They stream video, use social media, conduct financial transactions, work remotely, run businesses, consume entertainment and communicate through data-based applications.
Every additional service increases demand for network capacity.
That is why the company’s N1.6 trillion capital expenditure over the past 18 months is strategically important.
MTN’s challenge is no longer simply to connect more subscribers. It has to ensure that existing customers can use increasingly data-heavy services without a deterioration in quality.
Network planning has therefore become a continuous process.
Kadri said the company uses forecasting and other tools to identify future demand and areas of opportunity, allowing it to plan capacity before congestion becomes a major problem.
The next connectivity cycle could be even more demanding. The company is already looking beyond 5G, while industry-wide discussions are moving toward newer technologies and ways of moving traffic across different networks.
This makes fibre infrastructure increasingly important.
The 90,000km opportunity
The federal government’s planned 90,000-kilometre fibre-optic network could provide another major layer of infrastructure for operators such as MTN.
For MTN, the project could help expand high-speed connectivity beyond the country’s largest urban centres and support the growth of home broadband and digital services.
The company said it is interested in participating in the broader expansion of connectivity.
The opportunity is larger than simply providing faster internet. Fibre is the backbone on which cloud services, data centres, AI applications, enterprise networks and digital businesses will depend.
If Nigeria succeeds in expanding its fibre infrastructure, telecom operators will be able to build more services on top of a wider and more reliable digital foundation.
For MTN, that would strengthen the case for becoming a broader technology platform rather than remaining primarily a mobile network operator.
The smartphone problem
There is, however, another bottleneck: access to devices.
High-quality smartphones remain expensive for many Nigerians, limiting their ability to use 4G, 5G and data-heavy applications.
MTN is reluctant to take the full risk of manufacturing or owning large inventories of devices because technology changes too quickly.
A phone bought today can become less attractive when a new generation of technology arrives.
Instead, the company is expanding partnerships with device manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers.
The strategy is designed to make better devices available to more Nigerians without forcing MTN to carry the full inventory and obsolescence risk on its balance sheet.
The company also wants its partners to move beyond Nigeria’s largest cities. The logic is simple: if the next wave of digital growth is expected to come from a broader population, devices cannot remain concentrated in urban markets.
From entertainment to digital life
A’isha Mumuni, the chief digital officer at MTN Nigeria, said the company’s digital strategy also extends into entertainment.
Its Next Afrobeats Star platform is moving into its second season, while the company is producing other family-friendly and educational content, Mumuni added.
The initiatives show how the operator is trying to turn connectivity into a broader consumer relationship.
A customer who uses MTN not only for calls and data but also for entertainment, financial services and digital content becomes more valuable to the network.
This is the broader platform opportunity. MTN does not necessarily need to own every service. It can provide the network, distribution, customer relationship and digital infrastructure that allow other services to reach millions of Nigerians.
Read also: Inside MTN Nigeria’s N3trn H1: Network investment, taxes and diesel bill
A different MTN at 25
The transformation comes as Nigeria’s telecom market enters a more difficult phase.
Network costs have risen sharply. Inflation has increased the cost of equipment, energy and operations, while customers remain sensitive to price. At the same time, operators need to invest heavily because demand for data continues to rise.
MTN’s response is to combine infrastructure investment with new revenue streams.
The company has already shown that it can scale a network business. The next question is whether it can successfully turn that scale into a broader digital ecosystem.
Kadri’s comments suggest that MTN does not see its future as a simple race from 5G to 6G.
Instead, the company wants to use each new generation of connectivity as a foundation for more services.
“Our job as MTN is to always be at the forefront of technology, to ensure that we are able at any point in time to provide our customers with the right levels of experience and stay true to our commitment to make their lives better,” said Ugonwa Nwoye, the chief customer relations and experience officer of MTN Nigeria.
That puts the company’s next 25 years on a different footing from its first. The first era was about getting Nigerians connected. The next could be about monetising what Nigerians do once they are connected.
For MTN, that means the biggest opportunity may no longer be the number of SIM cards on its network, but the number of digital transactions, financial services, entertainment products and AI-enabled experiences that can run across it.
The network remains the foundation, but the bet is that the value of the next 25 years will be built on everything that sits above it.
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