2015/10/02 by Ewan Sutherland · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Engineering · #Banking stability, regulation, efficiency #ICT Impact and Policies #Public-Private Partnership Projects
paper · doi:10.1080/02500167.2015.1100645
openalex publication_date 2015/10/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/09
The MTN Group, based in South Africa, is a multinational enterprise from an emerging economy (EE-MNE), operating mobile telecommunications networks in Asia and Africa. It was built up by negotiating licences and by acquiring operators, notably Investcom, a Lebanese-owned firm with operations in Asia, Africa and Cyprus. Such opportunities arose from the liberalisation of national markets and the financialisation of the sector. MTN now has licences from some very unattractive governments, to which it pays taxes, provides wire-tapping, collects metadata and censors content. Its business partners have included political parties, cronies of political leaders and individuals on a United Nations asset freeze list. It denies allegations it displaced a rival in Iran by corrupt means. It successfully became a major international operator, but acquisitions have stopped, forcing it to rely on organic growth and new technologies.