MTN Uganda - Afrikan Heroes

MTN And Airtel Uganda Pay $2.3M In Interest To Their Mobile Money Subscribers In 2nd Quarter Of 2022

September 25, 2022

During the second quarter of 2022, subscribers of MTN Uganda and Airtel Uganda received interest payments of 9.1 billion Ugandan shillings (about 2.3 million USD).

Subscribers will receive interest only if their account balance was higher than or equal to 1 shilling at any time between April 1 and June 30. The total amount paid out by MTN Uganda to its 19.8 million MoMo customers was 5.7 billion shillings, while the total amount paid out by Airtel Uganda to its approximately 20 million Airtel Money customers was 3.4 billion shillings.

The first date for payments was September 14.

This action conforms to the rules governing mobile money services in Uganda.

In order to comply with Uganda’s National Payments Systems (NPS) Act 2020, MTN Uganda and Airtel Uganda were required to split their mobile phone operations in June 2021.

Additionally, the legislation mandates that payment processing institutions distribute to their customers any interest accruing in a trust account.

The Bank of Uganda reports that in the second quarter of 2021, 3.9 billion mobile money transactions took place, whereas in the second quarter of 2019, the number of transactions reached 4.8 billion. The value of transactions increased by 37% over this time period, from 113.3 billion shillings to 156 billion shillings.

“We strongly believe that this quarterly interest paid to customers will encourage a culture of savings and create wealth and investment opportunities, especially in medium and small businesses that are heavy users of the mobile money platform,” said Richard Yego, Managing Director of MTN MoMo Uganda Ltd.

subscribers interest MTN Airtel Uganda

Revisiting The Demise Of South African Blockchain Startup Wala. Did Investors Miss A Great Opportunity?

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexpert

MTN Uganda Goes Public, Lists 22.4 Billion Shares

December 8, 2021

MTN Uganda has announced that it is going public with the listing of its 22.4 billion ordinary shares on the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE), with trading commencing immediately. The listing has received the requisite approvals from the Capital Markets Authority in Uganda and the USE. It follows the successful completion of the largest initial public offering in Uganda’s history, raising a record UGX535-billion ($149-million) from applications for 2.9 billion shares (including incentive shares).

“We are delighted with the successful completion of the offer. It clearly shows the confidence that Ugandans and other investors have in the company, its brand and its strategic intent,” said MTN Uganda Chairman Charles Mbire.

“We commend all the regulators for their support in our work to become a USE-listed company and to comply in a timely manner with the listing provisions of the national telecommunications operators’ licence,” he added.

MTN Uganda CEO Wim Vanhelleputte was also in a celebratory mood: “Today marks the conclusion of a remarkable journey which has given over 20 000 Ugandans the opportunity to become owners of MTN Uganda.”

“We are particularly proud of our digital m-IPO collaboration with the USE, an African first. More than 93% of the applications were made via the m-IPO platform, with the majority of these investors new market participants,” he added.

The listing reduces the ownership of MTN Group in MTN Uganda from 96% to 83.05%. It is in line with MTN Group’s strategic priority to create shared value, partly through ensuring broad-based ownership in all operating subsidiaries. This aligns with the Ugandan Communications Commission’s new licensing requirement for broad-based ownership by Ugandans, with a compliance deadline of mid-2022.

“With this listing, MTN Uganda becomes the Ugandan stock with the largest market capitalization in the USE,” said MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita. “We are very encouraged to have helped facilitate the broadest possible shareholder base in Uganda, with regional participation and in so doing, further developing the equity capital markets in this country.”

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

MTN Deploys “First-of-its-Kind” Infrastructure in Uganda

June 15, 2021

Africa’s leading Telecoms Company MTN has partnered with several members of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) in Uganda to sign an agreement that will advance network automation in the country and abroad using TIP’s Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway (DCSG). Analysts describe this as the first of its kind network deployment in Africa that will see MTN evolve its Transport Network and turn it into a future-proof asset that will seamlessly enable its network transition to 5G. Transport Network transmits data traffic between points within a network that enable access to the internet.

Through Ambition 2025, MTN’s strategic blueprint, Network-as-a-Service (Naas) is one of five scale platforms for growth that contribute to leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress.

DCSGs ultimately provide connectivity between (Mobile sites and Enterprises) and the core network, which is what users’ access to connect to the internet. DCSG at these cell sites will see the hardware and software de-coupled, allowing greater flexibility in upgrading software and configuration.Typically, cell site hardware and software are aggregated, requiring wholesale replacement to upgrade the transport network.

For the Uganda deployment, Aviat will oversee the deployment of this DCSG solution using Network Operating Software (NOS) provided by ADVA, running on Edgecore Hardware.

This solution in Uganda is a flagship development in accelerating connectivity in Africa, by enabling faster network roll-out to expand connectivity, a more stable and quicker network with reduced latency, providing users best-in-class connectivity to the internet.

“We are very excited about the potential of the DCSG solution. It promises to broaden our supplier market, expedite the development of new features, reduce capital expenditure, improve operational efficiencies through easier scalable and more features open networking ecosystem,” says Ali Monzer, CTIO, MTN Uganda.

“To advance our service offering to our subscribers we continue to innovate and evolve our networks to support the increasing demand of higher capacity. In collaborating with the TIP community partners, we are not only able to innovate as a community, but also deploy leading technologies such as the DCSG to advance our network automation objectives.”

“This large-scale deployment of the DCSG in MTN Uganda is testament to our commitment to accelerate the automation of MTN’s Transport Network,” says Lloyd Mphahlele, MTN Group General Manager responsible for the Transport Network.

“We are delighted to work with MTN on their network evolution journey. As Aviat, we are committed to bringing innovation and simplicity to MTN’s network. In collaboration with our TIP community partners Adva and Edgecore, the MTN Uganda network will be a showcase operation of an automated, intelligent, and always-on network. A real network of the future” says Peter Smith, CEO of Aviat Networks.

“TIP’s DCSG will accelerate MTN in its evolution towards a more open disaggregated, standard-based transport network that will meet future customer needs and enable a more simplified, scalable, and agile network operating model. This collaboration with MTN is one more example of the role TIP is playing as a vehicle to accelerate testing and deployment of open network solutions in Africa and as a catalyst for innovation. The solution provided by ADVA and Edgecore has gone through a lab validation as part of the TIP process to ensure its maturity,” says David Hutton, TIP’s Chief Engineer.

DCSG was developed within TIP’s Open Optical and Packet Transport (OOPT) Project Group. The TIP DCSG solution uses open, standard-based, disaggregated network technologies to target several opportunities in operators’ IP aggregation networks.

These include overall deployment cost reductions and the creation of a more diverse supply chain, as well as operational efficiencies from being able to use Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies for network management automation.

MTN announced its collaboration with the TIP community to build transport products and network configurations that enable the company’s ambitions in world-class network capabilities.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

MTN renews Uganda operating license after two-year negotiation

June 16, 2020

The MTN Group seem to heave a sigh of relief following the renewal of its license few in Uganda where it paid a $100m renewal fee for a period of 12 years starting this July. MTN, Africa‘s largest mobile operator by subscribers, has finalised a deal that will see it carry on its operations in Uganda for another 12 years.

Speaking on the need to renew its operational license in Uganda, MTN said it is “pleased to announce the conclusion of negotiations for the renewal of its second national operator license which expired in October 2018”.The mobile operator said it had met all conditions, including the payment of $100m (R1.7bn) as a renewal fee for a period of 12 years starting July 1 2020. Renewal negotiations have been ongoing for close to two years with Ugandan authorities. MTN was first allowed to operate in the East African country for 20 years back in April 1998.

The mobile network operator had applied for a 10-year extension and the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) gave it an interim license, pending resolution of a number of unspecified issues. Ugandan authorities have previously said that MTN had agreed to list its shares on Uganda’s local bourse as a condition of renewing its license. MTN Uganda is the country’s biggest telecom company with more than 10-million subscribers. It competes with a local unit of India’s Bharti Airtel, as well as smaller companies. MTN said it will conclude the signing of the agreement with the UCC in the next few days.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry