Significant transformation milestone reached as MTN SA achieves level one B-BBEE status

MTN SA's commitment to transformation and improving access to mobile technology across SA has resulted in the company today achieving the significant milestone of level 1 B-BBEE contributor status.

This achievement comes at a time when South Africa ramps up efforts to recover the economy and speed up the inclusion of black-owned businesses in these efforts. MTN stands in strong support of government's commitment to ensure South Africans are able to benefit from transformation across business, employment and skills development.

The strategic intent was to reach this important level within three years, but MTN is proud to have reached its target in only two years thanks to the accelerated and concerted commitment of its entire team.

The result of this can be seen in the procurement spend with black-owned vendors, where in 2016 MTN spent R3.5 billion, but by 2019 that had increased to R7.1 billion. In 2016, MTN had spent R9.2 billion with black women-owned vendors and this had increased to R10.5 billion in 2019.

"MTN believes in the future of SA, but without broad levels of sustained and consistent inclusion and access to technology, the country will not reach its potential. To this end, our 4G coverage has reached 96% of our population, ensuring that we do not leave any township or village behind. We are extremely proud to have therefore reached level one status ahead of target and look forward to doing even more to drive change and improve lives for all South Africans," says MTN SA CEO Godfrey Motsa.

MTN's B-BBEE strategy identifies enterprise and supplier development and skills development as two key focus areas. "This strategy is premised on making our customers' lives brighter by contributing to shared value creation through addressing socioeconomic challenges at scale," says Motsa.

Great strides were made in the last two years by focusing on the key strategic objectives.

"The powerful collaboration between business and team MTN to ensure alignment between the organisational strategies and the B-BBEE objectives has been a major factor behind our success," he adds.

MTN intends to implement this winning strategy across all transformation touch-points within the business. "This is just the beginning; we are pro-transformation and open for even more collaboration as we invite black business to engage even more with MTN going forward.

"The re-alignment of our procurement policies resulted in notable traction in spend with black-owned vendors seeing an increase of R2.2 billion, exempted micro enterprises which saw an increase of R448m and Black Designated Group suppliers with an increase of R272m in 2019," Motsa explains.

It is also notable that MTN SA upheld its pledge of participating in and permanently appointing 1 000 youth for the YES4Youth Programme as its contribution in addressing the youth unemployment challenges that the country faces. "This programme immediately proved to be a success for ourselves as we benefited from a new talent pipeline and the YES4Youth cohort where permanent employment was created," he adds.

"MTN was born in democracy and we believe that transformation is in our DNA. We will continue to demonstrate that through truly inclusive economic growth. As the country faces up to the socioeconomic challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, MTN will leverage its firm foundation to ensure that all South Africans can enjoy the benefits of the digital world," concludes Motsa.