MTN South Africa plans to offer 4G smartphones that cost from 99 rands ($5.4) to 1.2 million of its prepaid customers as part of work to shift the country from older 2G and 3G technologies.
The initiative will be executed in three phases commencing in May 2025 until the end of 2026, MTN said in a statement on Monday. One of the conditions for receiving the device is that it can only be used with an MTN Sim card.
“In phase 1, over 5000 carefully selected customers will be offered 4G smartphones. The selection will be based on usage profiles, spending patterns and tenure, and will mainly be in Gauteng province (around Johannesburg and Pretoria),” the company said.
“In phase 2, more than 130 000 customers nationally will be offered the devices. In the third phase, more than 1.1 million MTN customers across the country will benefit.”
The devices will come pre-loaded with a variety of applications. MTN didn’t say if WhatsApp — the de facto messaging app owned by Meta Platforms and used by millions of South Africans daily — was among them.
MTN South Africa CEO Charles Molapisi said: “Regardless of where they live, we want to ensure that all South Africans can access the digital world.”
MTN has partnered with Smartphone For All, founded by Babatunde Osho, a former CEO of Metrofile Nigeria who also served as chief enterprise solutions executive at MTN Nigeria. Osho holds an MBA from Imperial College Management School and an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has also completed executive programmes at Wharton Business School, Oxford Said Business School and IMD Business School.
