DESPITE FUEL AND CASH SHORTAGES, MTN ADDS ANOTHER 1.1M CELLPHONE USERS IN NIGERIA

JOHANNESBURG - MTN Group said its largest operating unit added a net 1.1 million new subscribers, taking its total active user base to 76.7 million Nigerians during the quarter ended March 2023.

MTN Nigeria released its first quarter results in that country last Thursday.

The rollout of improved communications infrastructure brought an additional 170 5G sites across the oil-producing nation, taking data coverage to four percent of the population of over 200 million strong people.

The number of data users grew by 14.7 percent taking the total number of subscribers to 41.2 million.

“During the quarter, we focused on enhancing the capacity and coverage of our 4G and 5G networks, which supported rising data traffic,” said Karl Toriola, chief executive of MTN Nigeria, at the release of the results.

This had a positive and noticeable effect on its data usage, with total data usage traffic jumping 50.3 percent in the quarter.

Toriola, however, lamented the shortages of petrol and cash in the Africa’s largest exporter of petroleum fuels. Toriola said:

The impacts of the ongoing global macroeconomic and geopolitical developments on energy, food and general inflation were exacerbated locally by petrol and cash shortages experienced during the period.

Last year the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced new naira notes of 200, 500 and 1, 000 denominations, and said the old notes would cease to be legal tender at the end of January 2023.

But there was a limited availability of the new notes, resulting in cash shortages that limited the ability of cellphone users to physically buy data and airtime, according to Toriola.

Despite its position as Africa’s largest producer of fuel, Nigeria has an acute shortage of domestic refining capacity, resulting in routine shortages of vehicle fuel, which is increasingly used to generate electricity. - NEWS24.