MTN‘s representative has outlined an ambitious vision positioning the telecommunications giant as an infrastructure builder for Africa’s creative economy, leveraging access to 200 million subscribers across the continent.
Speaking at NECLive 2025, Funso Finnih declared that “MTN needs to start building dams”—infrastructure designed to enhance distribution, improve access, and enable monetisation for African content creators across multiple sectors.
Finnih drew historical parallels to Nigeria’s music transformation, noting that until policy shifts in the late 1990s and early 2000s prioritised local content on radio, African music remained marginalised. Today, Afrobeats artists fill global venues larger than local performers. “What that means is we need to stimulate this from home, extract as much value as we can, then export quality content,” he stated.
The MTN executive outlined three critical infrastructure pillars: distribution through instant access to 200+ million users continent-wide; affordable internet access through partnerships with device manufacturers and financial institutions; and monetisation capabilities that surpass traditional banks by reaching financially excluded populations through mobile money and micro-payment systems.
Finnih emphasised MTN’s unique position to enable micro-billing instead of expensive subscriptions, allowing creators to receive payments through cross-border mobile transactions. “We can reach more customers than financial institutions, whether they are financially included or not,” he explained.
Addressing concerns about Western-controlled platforms, Finnih advocated for local infrastructure investment. Using the analogy of Nigerian artists filling foreign venues while Nigeria lacks sufficient event spaces, he argued that “platforms being used by our content creators today—a lot of the value sits outside our continent. We need to invest in more platforms and infrastructure to store value on the continent.”
The call represents MTN’s positioning as an ecosystem enabler, challenging creators and platform developers to leverage the telecommunications infrastructure already connecting hundreds of millions of African consumers.
