Why MTN Ghana's profit surpassed MTN Nigeria’s in H1 2025
A comprehensive analysis of the factors contributing to MTN Ghana's stronger performance, despite being in a smaller market.
MTN Nigeria has long been the telco group’s unshakeable moneymaker. With over 80 million subscribers and Nigeria’s booming appetite for mobile data, fintech, and digital services, it had consistently pulled in more revenue than any other MTN market.
In H1 2025, though, it wasn’t the largest operation that brought home the biggest profit. It was MTN Ghana, which closed with a profit after tax of ₵3.6 billion ($327 million), comfortably ahead of MTN Nigeria's ₦414.9 billion ($271 million).
That's about $56 million or 20% more than Nigeria, and on paper, that shouldn’t happen, seeing as the MTN Nigeria has nearly triple MTN Ghana’s 30.2 million subscribers, and brought in ₦2.38 trillion ($1.57 billion) in revenue, more than four times MTN Ghana’s ₵11.3 billion ($1.02 billion).
To understand why this happened, we would need to start with MTN Nigeria’s position going into 2025
In H1 2024, MTN Nigeria rebounded from a brutal ₦519.1 billion ($339 million) loss, largely caused by ₦887.7 billion ($580 million) in forex losses. The naira’s volatility shredded earnings, and operating conditions were anything but stable.
