That was helped by a 13.5% foreign exchange tailwind from a stronger Nigerian naira and modest organic growth. Leverage fell to 2.8x and adjusted levered free cash flow rose 5.9% to $57.1 million. The results land as MTN Group’s acquisition of the remaining shares in IHS Towers moves toward completion.
The deal values IHS at an enterprise value of around $6.2 billion, with MTN paying approximately $2.2 billion in cash for the roughly 75% stake it does not already own. IHS shareholders approved the deal on 4 August at an extraordinary general meeting, clearing it by the required two-thirds majority. The transaction still needs regulatory approval in the relevant jurisdictions before it closes.
MTN already owned about 24.7% of IHS. Once complete, the deal brings full ownership of nearly 29,000 towers across six key MTN markets, including Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire and Zambia, back under MTN’s control. MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita called the approval an important step toward completing the transaction, and described towers as a critical value driver within the company’s Ambition 2030 strategy, as demand for connectivity, cloud services and AI grows across the continent.
IHS has spent the past few months narrowing its footprint outside Africa in parallel. It sold its 51% stake in Brazilian fibre venture I-Systems to TIM S.A. in May, and on 7 August closed the sale of its Latin American tower portfolio, more than 8,700 sites in Brazil and 250 in Colombia, to Macquarie Asset Management. The timing lines up: IHS shedding non-African assets in the same window that MTN moves to fully absorb its African ones.
The logic on MTN’s side is straightforward as owning the towers outright means internalising the margin it currently pays IHS to lease them, along with future third-party revenue from other operators using the same sites. For a group already exposed to currency volatility across its African markets, as this quarter’s naira-driven revenue boost shows, consolidating tower ownership is also a way to capture upside that would otherwise flow to an external infrastructure provider. Tower consolidation of this kind is part of a wider pattern in African digital infrastructure, where ownership of physical assets, towers, fibre, data centres, is increasingly treated as strategically important rather than something to outsource.
That’s one of the themes running through the regulatory roundtable at ITW Africa this September, where Nigeria’s Data Protection Commission, NITDA, ATCON and ICASA are due to address fragmented licensing and permitting across the continent, alongside a dedicated workshop on where investment is flowing across Nigeria’s digital infrastructure ecosystem. More detail on both sessions is in 8 sessions to watch at ITW Africa 2026. RELATED STORIES MTN acquires IHS Towers in $6.2bn deal 8 sessions to watch at ITW Africa 2026 ITW Africa 2026 07 September 2026 Africa’s leading connectivity event, uniting key leaders and decision-makers across the entire value chain.
Whether you’re involved in carriers, data centres, content, cloud, finance, satellite, or the vendor community, ITW Africa is the event to attend. Register now See event details Saf Malik Senior Content and Insights Manager