Information coming through to BusinessTech Africa is that Africa’s largest mobile telecoms operator, MTN, has reported growth in Rwanda.
Dubbed the continent’s largest mobile operator has registered growth in its ninth-biggest market by subscribers.
The growth is recorded as more than a fifth for its year to end-December amid strong demand for its Mobile Money (MoMo) service, though it is still feeling the effects of 2021 licence renewal.
Service revenue grew 19.9% to 221.7 billion Rwandan Francs (R3.68 billion) in 2022, it said on Friday, though profit fell 12.8% to about R326 million.
News24 Business has it that MTN Rwandacell is listed on the Rwanda Stock Exchange (RSE) in 2021, thus making the company the first mobile network operator to list on the bourse of the east African nation.
However, the costs of renewing its operating licence in the same year are still being accounted for and excluding this effect, profit growth would have been more than 20%, the company said.
“Mobile subscribers increased by 5.9% year-on-year to 6.8 million, the company said, but MoMo subscribers increased by 16.3% to 4.3 million, while the number of merchants surged 192.6% to 141 222 at period end,” reports the website.
Mobile money ((MoMo) is an electronic service that enables users to send and receive money, make payments, and perform other transactions using their mobile phones.
“In 2022, MTN Rwanda delivered solid overall business performance and continued growth across all business areas in a challenging macroeconomic environment, characterised by persistent inflationary pressures and currency volatility,” said CEO Mapula Bodibe in the results.
“In delivering this performance, we had maintained our leadership in customer market share,” she said.
The South African mobile operator’s market share increased by 0.6 percentage points to 64.4% at the end of 2022, according to statistics from the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority.
