Sustainable societies
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Corporate social investment
MTN can only flourish when the communities and ecosystems in which it operates are healthy. We strive to leverage our core capabilities to enable the socio-economic development of the communities within which we operate.
Our approach to CSI is to systematically address job creation, enhance competitiveness and drive inclusive growth. We do so while ensuring that we maintain an emphasis on addressing National priority areas. We invest in numerous beneficiary focused programmes across our footprint each year, with a focus on youth, women empowerment, disaster relief and national priority areas
Our CSI strategy is outcomes-focused and aims to increase impact across Africa as all countries work towards a common goal, of ‘Leading Africa’s digital progress’.
Gender equality
MTN is committed to achieving gender equality.
Our approach to gender equality focuses on women in business, girls and women across our eco system. MTN has partnered with the United Nations (UN) Women HeforShe Alliance in a drive to enhance our gender-equality efforts.Working with UN Women, MTN will develop and up-skill women and girls to ensure they can actively participate within the digital economy.While we continue our mission to create a gender equal workforce by 2030, we also believe it is imperative to recognise and act on gender pay parity to effect meaningful progress.
While we continue our mission to create a gender equal workforce by 2030, we also believe it is imperative to recognise and act on gender pay parity to effect meaningful progress. We aim to achieve a minimum target of 30% women representation in business transformations, up-skilling programmes and specialised initiatives as part of Ambition 2025. We are also embedding diversity and inclusion by focusing on improving entry targets for leadership, succession, technology hiring and differently abled hiring.
Rural broadband
Africa faces several barriers to mobile internet adoption and MTN is working to address these by focusing on increasing rural coverage.
By supporting the accelerating digital needs of our customers, MTN is helping communities transform. Access to information can reduce poverty by educating and upskilling the youth, creating jobs and improving lives. We aim to improve our rural broadband coverage to 95% by 2025.We continued to close the coverage gap during 2021 through our rapid rural rollout programme (R3) by delivering 912 additional rural sites (2020: 684). Since the inception of the programme, we have expanded our coverage to more than 23 million (2020: 8.5 million) people in rural areas. Closing the coverage gap in rural areas would not be possible without collaboration with partners.
Partnerships also play an important role in using OpenRAN technology, which enables us to cost-effectively develop and install 2G to 5G networks in previously unconnected areas. An OpenRAN environment expands the ecosystem, which leads to lowered costs and drives accelerated innovation. In 2021, new low-cost, open-source RAN technology enabled the installation of 712 (2020: 1 000) commercial network base station sites in rural areas across our footprint.
