MTN Zambia shares progress and future goals for Zambia’s ICT sector

This morning MTN Zambia held a stakeholder engagement meeting where the company reflected on its work over the past 18 months, sharing the company’s strategies.

Felix Kamenga, MTN Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) opened the discussion, sharing the evolution of the company and letting us know that MTN has changed the way it does business to interact more with its customers. The system upgrades that have been made to the network so far provided an opportunity for them to get feedback from customers even more.

He said MTN has been challenging the value perception of some subscribers that ‘MTN is expensive’ or ‘bundles deplete fast on MTN’ by the introduction of new services/products.

“We set out to make a big and bold decision to be on the side of the customer. We needed to make the customer feel valued and appreciated. Even our members of staff had to understand that things had to change as 2018 was proclaimed the ‘Year of the Customer.’” – Kamenga.

He listed the 3 major highlights of the network over the past year:

1. Reduced data bundle pricing by over 80%
2. Introduced innovations to ease life for customers e.g the new MoMo virtual visa cards for online purchases, and MTN’s TeleSchool to help advance secondary school pupils as they write GCSE exams.
3. Improved network and increased investment in expansion of connectivity ($35.7m in 2018)

Charles Molapisi, MTN Zambia Chief Executive Officer, said his company is unwilling to postpone its ambition or intent. Being Zambia’s number 1 network means being able to provide services and products that cater to every customer’s possible needs whether they are a business person, a student, or a family, he said.

He assured the audience that 300 new sites will rolled out to villages and other rural areas around Zambia.

“We’ll continue to strive to change lives of people, especially in rural areas. We are here to expose ourselves to our customers. Not everything about our business is perfect, but we’re open to you, hold us accountable to our promises to you.” – Molapisi.

Ebenezer Asante, MTN Group Vice President, was also present, and he stated that fact that a customer only needs a service to satisfy a need, for example, if you want 500ml of water, you will pay for it as long as you derive the exact value and satisfaction you expected from drinking exactly that much water.

“The best position to be in as a business is on the customer’s side. What’s important to us is that when a customer presses the green button they get connected, that they can access services like MoMo in the middle of the night. We want service in the rural areas to be of the same quality and standard as in the major cities. We want to get to a point where an MTN customer has no need for a secondary phone on another network or a backup, because they know they can rely on our network connectivity all the time.” – Asante.

The government was represented by the Minister of Transport and Communications Permanent Secretary Misheck Lungu, who after 3 minutes of talking about the leadership, moved on the reason we were all there, to know what’s next for telecoms. He said the MNOs have not lived up to their expectations in the past so it’s encouraging to see companies like MTN expanding its reach and services, especially to the marginalized.

My smile widened when he specifically pointed out that women must be included in service delivery and the business. We need to see more female distributors on the network, because women are less likely to be included when development is taking place.

“ICTs are here to stay and spur growth and Government is determined to carry everyone on board. We’ll continue to invest in the ICT sector because value of utility must be provided. Government is also considering creating an ICT innovation hub after a consultation with ICT stakeholders.” – Lungu.

As Techtrends, best believe that we will be monitoring all these developments as they roll out and share them or critique them the best way we know how, right here 🙂