MTN brings people together by modernizing telecoms in Africa with Azure

Since its establishment in 1994, MTN has developed a sophisticated communication infrastructure that utilizes advanced technologies and the talents of diverse people to serve communities throughout Africa. The company soon realized it could do even more, hence the leadership team developed a new strategy termed Ambition 2025.

"In living our belief that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern, connected life, we aim to harness the power of innovation and emerging technology to expand our network and provide access to communication services while supporting the growth of the SME and large corporate segments," says Chika Ekeji, Group Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at MTN. 

MTN’s leadership team sought partners that shared their forward-thinking approach and commitment to excellence. The result—following a rigorous request for proposal (RFP) process—was the formation of a five-year strategic partnership between MTN and Microsoft, signed in September 2022. 

"We knew that migrating our operations to Microsoft Azure would provide better speed, flexibility, and cost efficiency, allowing us to revolutionize how we deliver our products and services," explains Ekeji. "For a successful transformation, we had the technology experts from Accenture helping us—a company that offers the experience and capabilities we needed for the migration.” 

One partnership to transform people’s lives

MTN sought to set a new global standard for the industry with effective operations on the cloud. 

"To successfully migrate our applications to the cloud, we have created a Cloud Centre of Excellence program called Project Nephos within our Ambition 2025 strategy," says Ekeji. "Part of the program is to enhance our common data model to bridge the gap between network, IT, and commercial domains using native Azure abilities such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Accenture will be leading the migration and support services for this engagement.” 

As part of the change management to accelerate the internal transformation, MTN’s South African and Nigerian employees took part in hands-on technical training under the Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative (ESI). "Thanks to this training, our employees are increasingly excited and enthusiastic about leveraging the cloud," says Ekeji. 

Sustainability benefits are also anticipated as cloud technology will enable the company to save resources and meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. “But it’s not only about going green. We want to see a meaningful impact on people’s lives by providing all citizens in Africa access to digital services,” explains Ekeji.

A new world of possibilities for SME

MTN’s current SME offerings represent a solid starting point in their markets; the plan is to leverage the partnership with Microsoft to build on these offerings and extend the range of services and experiences available to the SME customer base across the continent.  

“By leveraging the power of Azure and the broader Microsoft ecosystem of capabilities, we can transform the traditional telecommunications operating model and service offerings,” says Ekeji. “The access, engagement, discipline, and consistency of the leadership teams on both sides of the partnership has enabled us to reach this point today, and we are very excited about how much we can deliver together going forward,” he concludes.