MTN Group scoops African brand awards, named most helpful private sector brand during pandemic

25 May 2021

MTN Group’s brand is growing from strength to strength, evidenced by its top rankings in two separate independent brand surveys released this week.

MTN remains the ‘Most Admired African Brand’ in the Brand Africa 100: Africa’s Best Brands 2021 survey published on Tuesday. The survey covers 28 countries representing 80% of the continent’s population as well as 80% of its GDP.

For the 10th year running, MTN was also named as the most valuable and strongest South African brand by Brand Finance, which gave the Group a brand value of R44.8 billion in its South Africa 50 2021 survey released on Monday.

“MTN’s work to achieve the best brand in our markets is part of ensuring that we offer the leading customer experience. This is a vital enabler of our Ambition 2025 strategy,” said MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita, adding that 15 of the Group’s 21 operations boasted their market’s highest net promoter scores.

I would like to thank every one of our 278 million subscribers for trusting us to deliver the communication and digital services they need. We take seriously your customer experience, and strive every day to live our core belief that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life. I would also like to acknowledge MTN’s 19 300 people who work tirelessly to further digital and financial inclusion across our markets.”

This year, Brand Africa’s survey included a new category – brands which were perceived to have been helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic. MTN was named the number one private sector brand in this category and followed the World Health Organization in the overall rankings.

During COVID-19, the Group worked to keep people connected and informed. In a unique public/private partnership in early 2021, MTN donated US$25 million to the African Union’s vaccination programme to secure COVID-19 vaccines for the continent’s health workers.

The Group also worked with host nations to support the Africa COVID Communications and Information Platform and launched the #WearItForMe mask campaign to encourage people everywhere to protect each other.