MTN Group announced president and CEO Rob Shuter would be stepping down from his role at the end of his contract in March 2021.

Rob Shuter, a South African national, joined MTN as its new group president and CEO in the middle of 2016 from Vodafone Group where he held the role of CEO of the European Cluster.

MTN’s former CEO Sifiso Dabengwa quit in 2015 amid a multi-billion dollar telecoms fine in Nigeria.

MTN is Africa and the Middle East’s biggest mobile network with over 250 million mobile phone subscribers across the region.

MTN has also appointed Charles Molapisi, chief technology and IT officer, to the group executive committee. MTN has also extended the contract of Jens Schulte-Bockum, group chief operations officer, until 31 March 2022.

MTN added 18 million customers to reach a total of 251 million and increased data users by 17 million to 95 million and fintech customers by 7 million to 35 million.

MTN’s instant messaging platform called Ayoba is now live in 12 markets with two million monthly active users.

MTN’s network rollout brought an additional 69 million people into 4G network coverage while reducing Capex intensity. MTN reduced Capex intensity to 17.5 percent from 19.3 percent, indicating greater efficiency in deploying assets.

MTN group service revenue increased 9.8 percent to R141.8 billion and EBITDA rose 13.6 percent to R53.4 billion.

The group’s results were supported by double-digit growth in service revenue by both MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana. The performance of MTN South Africa was impacted by economic pressure, new data usage rules and changes in recognition criteria for roaming revenue from Cell C due to delayed payments under the networking roaming agreement.

Rob Shuter was instrumental in implementing BRIGHT strategy for building digital operator model while optimising efficiency, Capex and cash-flow.