MTN Group's chief executive has stepped into the growing backlash against South African businesses operating across Africa, warning that boycott campaigns risk damaging the very economies they are meant to protect.
Ralph Mupita made the comments in an interview with Bloomberg, as social media campaigns in Nigeria, Ghana and other African countries push for the expulsion of South African-owned businesses in response to the ongoing anti-immigrant crisis playing out in South Africa.
Protests Reach Ghana
In Ghana, the pressure has gone beyond online noise. Protesters have gathered outside MTN's offices demanding South African businesses leave the country. Mupita acknowledged the sensitivity of the moment but said MTN had not experienced direct operational damage yet.
"We have not seen impacts specifically to our business, but we're very sensitive in markets such as Nigeria and Ghana," he said.
MTN's Pan-African Identity
His broader argument was that companies like MTN should not be reduced to their country of origin. MTN operates across more than 20 African markets, and Mupita was direct about where the money actually comes from.
"MTN makes less than 20% in South Africa and makes 80% of our earnings elsewhere," he said, a figure he used to make the case that the company is, in practical terms, far more African than it is South African.
Threat to African Free Trade
Beyond MTN's specific situation, Mupita framed the boycott movement as a threat to the African Continental Free Trade Area, arguing that pan-African businesses are central to making economic integration work. Retaliatory measures, he said, would set that project back at a moment when the continent can least afford it.
Youth Dividend at Risk
He also connected the conversation to Africa's demographic challenge. With roughly 70 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's population under the age of 30, the continent faces an urgent need to create jobs at scale.
Mupita argued that the digital economy and the infrastructure companies like MTN provide is one of the few viable paths to turning that youth population into an economic asset rather than a pressure point.
"MTN also believes that embracing the benefits of the digital economy is vital to turning the youth bulge we have in Africa into a youth dividend," he said.
The comments land in the same timeline that South Africa's Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi admitted the xenophobia crisis was producing real economic consequences including South African artists losing performance bookings across the continent. The reputational damage, she acknowledged, could no longer be denied.
Mupita's message to the continent was essentially the same: the damage from this crisis is real, but the response should be engagement, not economic isolation.
