Partnerships for the planet: Circular economy MTN Guinea-Republic
The current fragile macroeconomic situation has further heightened the ever-present practice within MTN to drive efficiency, bolster cost containment initiatives and improve working capital management while utilising ESG as an enabler. MTN Guinea-Republic has successfully demonstrated this in practice by reusing refurbished network infrastructure equipment that would have previously been idle, obsolete or disposed in another MTN market, thereby supporting sustainableresource management. This enabled us to execute our strategic projects at a fraction of the cost of new equipment and, more importantly, to maximise the resources available while fulfilling MTN’s commitment to protecting the planet. By reusing equipment, we avoid emissions that would have been emitted during the mining of the resources, manufacturing and distribution needed for new equipment.
This would not have been possible without our Circular Economy programme, Project Infinity, that enables buying refurbished equipment with the same assurances as new. The programme utilises digital solutions, which includes an online marketplace platform for visibility in matching the supply to the demand, a framework to ensure quality, tax and trade compliance, the provision of process support, technical and logistic capabilities, and a reporting structure.
The MTN Guinea-Republic technology team uses the Marketplace platform to check whether the required equipment is available elsewhere in our markets for reuse before placing an order for new. Through the online platform, the team can place their order, track it all the way to delivery to check how much emissions they avoided though reuse.
MTN Guinea-Republic have adopted the programme into the sourcing strategy to maximise the supply chain opportunities offered and are regular return customers to the Marketplace. By embedding sustainable practices into our operations through a programmatic approach, MTN Guinea-Republic has reused 237 pieces of network equipment so far, which in turn accounted for 155.6tCO2e emissions avoided.