At the heart of these changes is the appointment of Dr. Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria, to an expanded role as Vice President of Francophone Africa, where he will oversee growth and market share expansion across Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Congo Brazzaville.

Toriola, who previously held responsibilities across MTN’s West and Central Africa operations, brings deep experience to this new assignment.

His dual role underscores the Group’s commitment to Francophone markets, which remain key growth engines within Africa’s evolving digital economy.

Adapting to a Shifting Landscape

The announcement follows months of strategic review by MTN’s board, which evaluated the progress of Ambition 2025 in light of shifting geopolitical, macroeconomic, and technology trends.

While challenges remain, MTN sees enormous opportunity to accelerate Africa’s digital future by focusing on three core platforms: Connectivity, Fintech, and Digital Infrastructure.

Group President and CEO, Ralph Mupita, explained:

“These leadership changes illustrate the depth of talent and experience across MTN. They position us to execute with greater focus, deliver accelerated growth beyond 2025, and create long-term value for all stakeholders.”

Key Executive Changes

To strengthen execution, the Group has restructured its executive committee (Exco) effective 1 November 2025:

• Karl Toriola – CEO, MTN Nigeria and VP of Francophone Africa, leading operations in Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Congo Brazzaville.
• Ebenezer Asante – VP of Ghana and Southern & East Africa (SEA), focusing on accelerating growth in Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, South Sudan, Sudan, Liberia, and joint ventures in Eswatini and Botswana.
• Ferdi Moolman – appointed CEO and Executive Director of MTN South Africa, succeeding Charles Molapisi.
• Yolanda Cuba – moves from Group Exco to Deputy CEO and Executive Director of MTN South Africa.
• Tsholofelo Molefe, Group CFO, takes on expanded responsibilities, now overseeing mergers & acquisitions alongside capital allocation.
• Selorm Adadevoh – becomes Group Chief Commercial, Strategy and Transformation Officer.
• Mazen Mroué – remains CEO of Digital Infrastructure, with sharper focus on fibre, data centres, tower partnerships, and non-terrestrial networks.
• Charles Molapisi – returns to his former role as Group Chief Technology and Information Officer, with a new mandate to accelerate AI adoption across MTN operations.

Strengthening MTN South Africa

MTN’s South Africa operations also enter a new era. Ferdi Moolman, who led MTN Nigeria between 2016 and 2021, now takes the helm of MTN South Africa to drive growth and maximize returns, supported by Yolanda Cuba as Deputy CEO.

Together, they will build on the resilience demonstrated under Molapisi’s leadership during a period of crippling power outages.

In governance changes, Sindisiwe (Sindi) Mabaso-Koyana will succeed Mike Harper as Chairperson of MTN South Africa in Q1 2026, ensuring a smooth leadership transition as Harper prepares to retire.

Unlocking Africa’s Digital Future

The leadership shuffle reflects MTN’s sharpened focus on growth opportunities across its three platforms. Within Connectivity, the Group will target homes and streamline digital offerings; in Fintech, it will scale its digital-first business; and through Digital Infrastructure, it will expand fibre, data centres, and leverage AI to create value.

“As we look beyond 2025, our strategic focus on Connectivity, Fintech, and Digital Infrastructure will allow us to unlock Africa’s digital future. These leadership changes strengthen our ability to deliver,” Mupita added.

Looking Ahead

With its new executive structure, MTN is positioning to scale emerging businesses, deepen financial inclusion, and accelerate digital adoption across Africa.

By placing experienced leaders like Karl Toriola at the forefront of strategic regions, MTN aims to build resilience, seize structural growth opportunities, and reinforce its position as Africa’s leading digital operator.

The Johannesburg-based telecoms giant now expects its service revenue to grow by at least “high teens” in the medium term, an upgrade from its previous “mid-teens” guidance. 

For the first half of 2025, service revenue climbed 22% to R105.1 billion ($5.97 billion), with Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda driving the surge for MTN Group. Total revenue increased 20% to R109.26 billion. 

The company swung back to profitability, recording R9.7 billion after reporting a R7.39 billion loss a year earlier when currency fluctuations weighed heavily on performance.

MTN’s strong rebound shows what management describes as a disciplined push into high-growth areas. Its fintech operations remain one of the brightest spots, with Nigeria delivering a 71.8% jump in revenue to N83 billion, powered by airtime lending and customer deposits. 

Connectivity also saw heavy investment, including 3,700 new sites rolled out in the first half of the year, 327 of which were 5G-enabled. The company is also scaling its digital infrastructure portfolio, anchored by the launch of the Dabengwa Tier III Data Centre, part of a $240 million infrastructure programme spanning fibre and satellite services.

With growth accelerating, the company has reorganised its leadership to match its evolving strategy. Ferdi Moolman, who previously led MTN Nigeria and is currently Group Chief Risk Officer, will take over as CEO of MTN South Africa. 

Charles Molapisi returns to the role of Group Chief Technology and Information Officer, with a mandate to drive artificial intelligence adoption across operations. Mazen Mroué will now focus entirely on digital infrastructure, overseeing MTN’s fibre and data centre expansion. 

Meanwhile, Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria, has been handed additional responsibility for Francophone Africa, including Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin.

The company said the changes align with its Ambition 2025 plan, which aims to transform MTN into Africa’s leading digital platform. By simplifying operations and strengthening leadership across its core platforms, MTN is positioning itself to capture opportunities in financial inclusion, broadband expansion, and technology-driven services.

“The executive changes are about positioning our leadership team to accelerate our strategic priorities,” MTN said in its update.

The tech giant is no longer simply chasing growth in traditional telecoms; its focus is now on a future where data, financial services, and infrastructure will bolster competition, not just against African competitors, but against global tech giants eyeing the continent.

As a leading operator in Africa, MTN is also set to be a front runner in the digital era. The premise of its “Ambition 2025“ strategy is intend on leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress.

During this year’s DTW, Mohamed Salah, Network Operations Assurance of MTN Group, attended the meeting and shared MTN’s progress and forward thinking on its digital strategy and Autonomous Networks (AN) construction.

Strategy

MTN, the largest mobile network operator in Africa, provides voice, data, fintech, digital, enterprise, wholesale and API services to more than 270 million customers in 19 markets. In the recent wave of digital transformation among operators, MTN took the lead in releasing its “Ambition 2025” strategy in 2021, aiming to become the largest and most valuable platform and provide the best connection in Africa.

When “Ambition 2025” was released, another formidable trend — AN — emerged in the industry, and soon became an extremely popular choice. AN aims to build Self-X network capabilities and achieve Zero-X user experiences. “In 2021, MTN officially kicked off our AN project to empower ‘Ambition 2025’,” Mohamed Salah said at the Autonomous Networks Leadership forum during DTW 2022.

Approach and Path

MTN’s AN project adopts the three-step strategy: “Adopt – Adapt – Apply”.

Adopt: Refer to the standard architecture, level concept, and best practices of TM Forum AN.

Adapt: Integrate advanced concepts from the industry, design MTN’s AN framework based on the actual situation of MTN, refine the L3 mid-term architecture and L4 long-term architecture within the framework, determine key features (such as interfaces between autonomous domains), and release MTN’s AN blueprint.

Apply: Based on the unified framework and architectures, carry out and enrich AN applications; deploy in multiple subsidiaries, including South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, and Global Connect; and verify and promote AN.

To achieve the goal of reaching L3 autonomous network by 2023 and L4 by 2025, MTN has allocated the three dimensions (network, service, and O&M process) of the TM Forum AN maturity model to different teams to jointly improve their ANL.

For example: The ICT infrastructure team is responsible for improving the ANL of the network domain; therefore, it will pool the AN capability of ICT suppliers, such as Huawei, to quickly improve the ANL of the network domain. Through network service APIs, capabilities are opened to upper-layer systems so as to improve the ANLs of the service and process domains.

Achievements

Mohamed Salah said MTN has invested in more than 10 AN innovations in multiple domains and subsidiaries, and has seen encouraging results. In 2021, MTN explored automatic O&M and developed use cases for the automatic recovery of sleeping cells.

This year, it took a step further by introducing the automatic diagnosis of cross-network faults. Currently, 70% of fault types can be automatically diagnosed, which is an extraordinary achievement.

By cooperating with Huawei, MTN has built a congestion-free IP network in MTN Nigeria. If congestion occurs on this network, it is detected within 1 minute, optimization paths are automatically calculated, and path optimization is completed in a single click.

This solves the problem of traffic congestion seen during the pandemic in Nigeria. Bearer network optimization is accelerated from several hours to just 3 minutes.

MTN base stations uses a large number of batteries to alleviate power instability issues. To improve the situation, MTN cooperated with Huawei to pilot an intelligent battery backup prediction solution which leverages AI algorithms to predict battery backup time online.

This solution reduces sites’ power failure risks, facilitates the appropriate scheduling of site tickets, and intelligently determines batteries’ lifespans, reducing unnecessary battery replacements (by 8%).

At the end of his speech, Mohamed Salah concluded that these use cases came from different domains and subsidiaries, they were all organized under MTN’s AN strategy and included in MTN’s AN blueprint. Once the business values of excellent use cases were verified, MTN immediately promoted the use cases in more subsidiaries in batches. It is gratifying to see that the ANL has increased in subsidiaries and AN achievement manifest their own values. All this empowers MTN’s “Ambition 2025” strategy.