2012 was great for MTN in a sense that we were able to redefine MTN’s vision and mission, and honed our strategy which led to the changes in our business model. Our new vision – to lead the delivery of a bold, new Digital World to our customers – marks an evolution from the vision to be the leader in telecommunications in emerging markets. With clear market leadership in 15 of the 22 countries in which we operate, the leading telecoms brand in Africa and a top brand in the Middle East, we have largely delivered on this earlier vision. We do, however, remain focused on developing economies.

Our new mission – to make our customers lives a whole lot brighter – means easier engagements with MTN such that all our customers are MTN promoters. It is a differentiated MTN-branded customer experience that we give at every touch point.

Economic conditions have been and continue to become tougher for all ICT operators, even in traditional emerging and growth markets where demand for services and access to services has historically been lagging. Increased competition with new operators coming into our markets and aggressive pricing resulted to some degree of loss of market share and economic, environmental and socio-political challenges. The knock-on effect of sanctions against Iran continues to be felt in our business. We also witnessed the shrinking of voice and a surge on the data consumption which presented another challenge as far as the demand for broadband and related infrastructure in some of our markets.

Despite this, we were able to deliver growth in some of our key markets such as Nigeria and South Africa, and we saw growth in data consumption with the arrival of affordable smartphones in most of our markets.

I am pleased that we have made substantial progress in transforming our operating model to reflect the new realities. We looked at introducing and implementing projects and standardisation processes that will lead to operational efficiencies focused on optimising our assets in the same vein, we are deploying an integrated service delivery platform to improve innovation time to market for value added services. We are also paying a closer look on the supply chain management, even looking at how our business and operating culture can carry us into the future. As MTN, we particularly focused on how we effectively govern our business more sustainably and ethically in light of the many global issues, challenges and demands on ICT operators over the last few years.

In the same year, allegations of inappropriate behavior were leveled against MTN by Turkcell, regarding the operating license issued to Irancell back in 2004/2005. We are pleased to note that after a year-long investigation by the Board-appointment commission, headed up by independent former jurist Lord Leonard Hoffman, no substance to these allegations were found.

On the network side, some of our operations experienced quality of service issues and this resulted in some regulators threatening to shut down our network or issue fines. Whatever the reason for poorer than anticipated quality of service –the need for supporting regulatory and infrastructure solutions from authorities, and in some cases, addressing theft and vandalisation of network sites and cable, or damage by other parties in their line of work – we know that a growing, stable network is fundamental to achieving our vision and ensuring that we can make our customers’ lives brighter. As a result we invested more than R30billion into network capacity, and continue our 4G/ LTE investments.

A few years ago, the term Arab Spring was not part of anyone’s vocabulary, and issues of snooping, cybersecurity and hacking were largely confined to security agencies, IT departments and sometimes even bored teenagers around the world. Much has changed as we all know: cyber theft of identities, organised crime and cyber-intelligence, a global clampdown on freedom of speech and digital communications by governments from the USA and Europe to the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world has, sadly, become the norm. Like most other ICT operators, and even equipment manufacturers globally, MTN is not immune to these issues, more so given where we operate.

We are proud to serve over 22 countries across Africa and the Middle East, and our over 189 million subscribers attests to the fact that we are playing a fundamental role in ensuring telecommunications inclusivity. However, these are not single, standard markets where uniform geographic, political, judicial, regulatory, socio-economic and cultural contexts allow “develop one, fit to all” solutions to macro operating issues. This complexity is further compounded by the innovation revolution taking place in the information and communication technology sector, where innovative solutions that break down social, economic and community barriers are catalysts for positive socio-economic development.

Our business is to facilitate communications in the digital age. We remain a-political, neutral and focused on working with our stakeholders to support the UN declaration of human rights regarding freedom of expression, and privacy and security. This though, is often easier said than done. Like all operators, we are restricted by the terms of licenses granted by regulatory authorities and local laws. It is important that we also ensure the safety of our employees and customers in all we do, and operators globally are grappling with the challenge of how best to balance rights and laws in operations to the satisfaction of all stakeholders. However, we are dedicated, from the Board level downwards, to fundamentally address these difficult issues, working with internal cross-functional content experts and external stakeholders.

We are in the business of providing communication services digitally. Any activity by any party that challenges this position is a challenge to our very existence, and therefore we are working hard and will act to our utmost capacity and scope of influence to continue to achieve our vision of leading the delivery of a new digital world to our markets in a way that is responsible, ethical and sustainable.

Climate change impact on our business has been identified and we have been working these past three-odd years to understand the financial, regulatory and physical risks – and opportunities – that we could face as a result. Although, as an ICT operator, we have a relatively smaller impact on climate change and environmental resources such as biodiversity, the health of the oceans or water use, the greatest areas where we can try and be more responsible is in our use of energy.

We have stressed the importance of process optimisation which has positive spin-offs in the reduction of energy consumption, operating costs and carbon and equivalent emissions. Access to energy is still a challenge to most people in emerging markets where we operate; it makes more sense to be energy efficient so that we take special care of our own usage of a resource that most local communities don’t even have access to. Not only are we working to understand our environmental impact, and mitigate this to the best of our abilities, we are also rolling out solutions such as affordable handset recharging via solar powered handsets in some of our markets, alongside offering Africa’s lowest cost digital handset, to reduce the cost of communications to our customers in a socially and environmentally-responsible manner. By working on both managing and reducing our energy use, we traded over 15 284 worth of forward-traded carbon credits for our network switching sites this year, and achieved Silver LEED Certification from the US Green Building Council for the MTN Group head office campus in South Africa. We have made progress in formally determining our baseline to reduce energy costs and emissions, and our operations are aware of the cost and implications of traditional energy use. In fact, they are working hard at trial and live engineering and alternative energy solutions to do their bit towards more effective, efficient and environmentally-responsible use of this fundamental resource.

I think we are making some progress on embedding responsible environmental and social business requirements into the business; there is positive response and understanding from MTN employees of what is expected out of them to fully integrate it in their daily lives at work. However, I know we can and must do more on quick win areas such as energy efficiency, e-waste management and the use of our products and services to help reduce the digital divide.

On the back of all issues and allegations published on various media platforms, we saw it fit to grow our focus on social and ethical governance functions and the expected conduct of every employee. We partnered with Ethics Institute of South Africa to help us provide the much needed training to all our employees, starting at the highest levels of the organisation.

Lastly, I think the fact that we continue to maintain our listing on the JSE Social Responsibility Index attests to our efforts. However, we are acutely aware of the need to improve our performance annually, and prove this to our stakeholders, so we remain focused on ensuring sustainability and core business work hand-in-hand.

We are aware that many of our customers come from under-resourced and under-developed communities. Access to education, healthcare and support for national imperatives to develop societies cannot be the sole responsibility of governments given that the range of issues and solutions is complex, challenging, and requires coordinated responses from a spectrum of stakeholders. We draw our business from these communities, and they are supporters of our efforts to grow our business. To this end, it is only appropriate that we support long term programmes that in some meaningful way can help them grow economically and sustainably across multiple generations. I’m particularly pleased that in 2012, we increased our investment in communities through MTN Foundations by 34%, in spite of the tough economic conditions many of our operations faced.

This was also supported by our successful employee volunteering programme Y’ello Care, which each year, sees more than 50% of our colleagues support a United Nations-based theme or Millennium Development Goal initiative by volunteering within their communities. Last year, we focused on the importance of education. As a business, we also participated for the first time in the celebration of Mandela Day, which is an event celebrated globally. Some of the Y’ello Care projects were extended to commemorate the 67 minutes of Mandela Day – this is something we are very proud of.

Our employees are passionate about giving back to their communities: this excitement shows in how our Opcos compete with each other to implement the most successful community initiatives each year. CSI is simply a way of life for MTN employees.

I think a key approach would be our focus on customer needs at all levels. A strong differentiator will be the delivery of customised products and services meeting the customer’s needs. Recent performance in our markets has shown that data consumption is on the rise and this is the space we want to be playing in as a business to provide well-structured data packages to drive up consumption. In this way, we will enable more people to have internet access and further enhance access to the digital world. We are also working hard at understanding what matters to our spectrum of stakeholders to ensure we are aligned and try to meet their expectations more effectively.