MTN Nigeria is making more money than ever. But its average customer is contributing less to that growth.
The telecom operator increased service revenue by 25.9% in the first half of 2026 to ₦2.99 trillion ($2.25 billion), and its subscriber base grew 8.9% to 92.2 million, according to its financial results for H1 2026.
Yet MTN’s average revenue per user (ARPU) fell 8.82% to $3.41 in the second quarter of 2026, its first decline since the second quarter of 2025, when ARPU was $3.02, according to MTN Group’s results fact sheet. Local-currency ARPU fell 1.67% to ₦5,101 ($3.81).
While the decline in dollar ARPU might reflect currency movements, the fall in naira ARPU suggests that the pressure is not purely an exchange-rate effect. The naira ended March at ₦1,383.58/$ and June at ₦1,379.68/$. But MTN added 7.5 million subscribers in the first half of the year, and the influx of new, potentially lower-spending customers grappling with double-digit inflation of 15.91% as of June may also be weighing on the average.
“From quarter to quarter, our operational strategy may vary depending on market conditions,” Ayham Moussa, MTN’s chief operating officer, said on the company’s July 31 earnings call. “In some periods, particularly during high consumption seasons, we may focus more on yield. In other periods, especially when affordability is more constrained, we may place greater emphasis on acquisition and use CVM initiatives to drive growth in the number of users. So, the balance between yield and acquisition can vary by season.”
While the company does not disclose ARPU by subscriber cohort, the numbers suggest that MTN Nigeria’s post-tariff growth cycle is beginning to normalise. After a year in which higher prices did much of the work, the company now has to rely on a harder form of growth, which is getting millions of mostly price-sensitive customers to spend more on data without triggering resistance.
In 2025, pricing was MTN Nigeria’s biggest commercial lever. Early that year, it increased tariffs by 50%, and by Q2 2025, service revenue had grown 67.9% year-on-year. A year later, revenue growth fell to 13.3% year-on-year in Q2 2026.
The tariff increase enabled MTN Nigeria to earn substantially more from its existing customers. But with the effects of those price adjustments now waning, the company needs more customers and higher consumption among them to sustain revenue growth.
“Growth moderated in Q2, primarily reflecting the full annualisation of prior price adjustments,” Karl Toriola, MTN Nigeria’s chief executive officer, said in the company’s H1 earnings release.
Airtel Nigeria’s ARPU, meanwhile, increased by 33.33% in Q2 2026, while its overall revenue increased by 50%. Airtel said the revenue growth reflects the full effect of the tariff adjustments, which it said were fully implemented in the fourth quarter of 2025. MTN, which implemented its tariff increase earlier in 2025, has already experienced the full effect of those adjustments in Q2 2025. Airtel is therefore still benefiting from a price-led growth cycle that has largely run its course for MTN.
Results from subsequent quarters will provide a clearer picture of whether Airtel’s ARPU growth is being driven by the delayed effect of its tariff adjustment or a more sustained improvement in revenue per customer.
More Subscribers, Lower ARPU: See How the Mix Changes
Track how MTN’s H1 2026 subscriber surge and FX pressures impact its average revenue.
Data is the biggest opportunity
MTN Nigeria added 7.5 million subscribers in the first half of 2026. At the same time, average data usage per subscriber increased 15.2%, total data traffic rose 25.8%, and smartphone penetration stood at 66.4%.
“Data remains our largest structural growth opportunity,” Toriola said.
Data revenue increased 38.4% in H1 2026, supported by growth in active data users, while Nigeria’s data consumption grew 46.75% year-on-year in June 2026.
MTN Nigeria is trying to get more value from a growing customer base, not simply by charging more, but by getting customers to consume more.
“What you will see is a market-wide push towards offering more value to customers, particularly in data. That is the pricing and value dynamic we are seeing in the market today,” Moussa said on the company’s July 31 earnings call.
“Our strategy is to continue optimising our pricing while also offering more value to our customers. We aim to strike the right balance between maintaining the best possible economics for the business and ensuring that customers continue to receive strong value from our offers.”
This strategy is important because Nigeria remains a relatively low-ARPU market for MTN, despite its large subscriber base.
MTN Ghana, with a subscriber base of 32.8 million, had an ARPU of $6.66 in Q2 2026, the highest in the group. MTN South Africa, with 39.49 million subscribers, had an ARPU of $5.26.
Nigeria wins on scale. Ghana wins on value.
92.2M
39.5M
32.8M
$6.66
$5.26
$3.41
See how all 13 MTN operating markets rank
- Nigeria (92.2M)
- South Africa (39.5M)
- Ghana (32.8M)
- Uganda (25.4M)
- Côte d’Ivoire (16.0M)
- Cameroon (13.4M)
- Rwanda (8.7M)
- Zambia (7.5M)
- Benin (6.8M)
- South Sudan (4.5M)
- Congo-Brazzaville (3.8M)
- Sudan (3.4M)
- Liberia (2.3M)
- Ghana ($6.66)
- Congo-Brazzaville ($5.78)
- South Africa ($5.26)
- Cameroon ($5.01)
- Liberia ($4.42)
- Benin ($4.30)
- Sudan ($3.90)
- Nigeria ($3.41)
- Côte d’Ivoire ($3.30)
- Uganda ($3.26)
- Zambia ($3.19)
- South Sudan ($2.85)
- Rwanda ($2.14)
Nigeria has almost three times Ghana’s subscriber base, yet generates roughly half as much revenue per user.
This does not make Nigeria less important to MTN. The group generated ZAR 115.32 billion ($7.15 billion) in 2026, with Nigeria accounting for 30.64%. The company already has scale, but the challenge is to turn that scale into more value per customer.
“The strength of our broader portfolio remained evident, helping to offset temporary headwinds in individual markets. This supported Group service revenue growth of 17.5%* to R115.3 billion, led by MTN Ghana, MTN Nigeria and our broader markets portfolio,” said Ralph Mupita, Group President and CEO, Ralph Mupita in the group’s financial statements.
Scale can only carry MTN Nigeria so far
Nigeria’s relatively low broadband penetration still leaves room for MTN to add subscribers and deepen usage. Broadband penetration stood at 56.79%, while the country is expected to add 32 million unique mobile subscribers between 2025 and 2030.
But adding and serving more customers also comes at a higher cost. MTN Nigeria’s cost of sales reached ₦376.09 billion ($281.23 million) at the end of H1 2026.
For now, a growing subscriber base can compensate for lower ARPU. But that becomes harder as the market matures and subscriber growth slows, leaving MTN Nigeria with a different problem than the one it had in 2025: how to generate more revenue from its existing customers.
Data remains MTN’s immediate opportunity. It can increase the value of its customer base by getting existing subscribers to consume more data, particularly as smartphone penetration rises and more customers move onto 4G and 5G networks. But this opportunity is under threat as smartphones become more expensive, slowing adoption among price-sensitive customers and limiting the number of subscribers who can move into higher-value data plans.
MTN already incentivises usage with bundles for platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, encouraging customers to consume more streaming content.
What if MTN monetised more of its 92.2M users?
See how much of MTN’s telecom base would need to become fintech users to materially expand its financial-services reach.
87.2M not yet converted
36.9M users at 40%
5.4%
32.5%
$5.00
Source: TechCabal reporting & NIBSS Q1 2025 Data | Built by TechCabal
The company is also making a longer-term bet that more data consumption will shift into the home, creating demand for high-speed broadband and giving MTN another way to monetise customers through fibre-to-the-home (FTTH).
“We are already capturing the largest share of market growth, with MTN representing around 90% of fibre connections based on NCC data,” Toriola said on July 31. “Our approach remains disciplined. FTTH targets high-value locations, as well as locations where the conversion from homes passed to homes connected is strongest, while 5G fixed wireless access helps us expand serviceability at scale.”
That gives MTN another route to increase the value of its customer base without relying entirely on mobile tariffs. But the company is also looking beyond connectivity.
Fintech could allow MTN to monetise its large subscriber base through financial products. MTN currently has about five million fintech subscribers and wants to reach 30 million over the medium term, effectively converting more of its existing telecom customers into financial services customers.
“It would be converting more of the Nigerian customers who are using our telecommunications services into fintech customers,” Mupita told TechCabal in August.
The mobile money opportunity was worth ₦20.71 trillion ($13.49 billion) in Q1 2025, according to NIBSS, but fintechs such as OPay and PalmPay have already established strong positions in digital financial services, while MTN is still building the capabilities needed to compete, including in lending. Its move into fintech, therefore, offers a potentially significant new revenue stream, but one that will require investment and carry a different set of competitive risks from those of its core telecom business.
MTN cannot rely on another large tariff increase to drive ARPU growth. Nigeria took more than a decade to approve the industry’s first major tariff adjustment in years, making repeated price increases an uncertain growth strategy.
Instead, MTN needs to make its existing customer base more valuable by increasing data consumption, moving more customers onto smartphones and higher-speed networks, expanding into home broadband, and finding new ways to monetise customers through financial and digital services.
In 2025, MTN Nigeria needed to earn more from its existing customers to keep its lights on. Now, with the boost from its earlier tariff adjustments fully annualised, the challenge is different. It needs to turn its scale into deeper customer value.
The numbers are still moving in MTN Nigeria’s favour. It has a record 92.2 million subscribers. But as subscriber growth eventually slows, the next phase of MTN’s growth will depend less on simply getting bigger and more on making each customer worth more.
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