Karl Toriola, current vice president for MTN Group’s West and Central Africa (WECA) region, will take over as MTN Nigeria CEO. Toriola succeeds Ferdi Moolman who has held the position for five years and will now take on the newly created role of group chief risk officer. Both appointments are effective 1 March.
MTN Group president and CEO, Ralph Mupita (pictured), said: “Karl brings extensive technical and commercial experience, as well as a deep understanding of the Nigeria market to the role. Karl started his MTN career in his home country at MTN Nigeria 14 years’ ago and has all the attributes necessary to lead this very important business into the future.”
Toriola joined the group in 2006 and has held a number of senior operational roles including chief technical officer of MTN Nigeria and CEO of MTN Cameroon. He is also a board member on a number of companies within the group, including MTN Nigeria.
In his most recent VP role, Toriola is credited as having turned around the fortunes of MTN Ivory Coast and MTN Cameroon over the past two years as the WECA markets made significant commercial and strategic strides. This has included gains in market share and the development of mobile financial services, which have proven invaluable to other MNOs on the continent and are an important driver of MTN Group’s medium- to long-term growth strategy.
MTN Nigeria launched its mobile money services for 98 million mobile customers last year.
MTN Nigeria is 78.8%, owned by MTN Group and is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The subsidiary contributes around a third to the group’s service revenue and its new CEO will be announced once the group’s strategy review is completed, before the end of November 2020.
Moolman’s promotion will see him draw on almost two decades of experience with MTN which the company said gives him “deep knowledge of the group, its markets and the telecoms sector”. Since his 2002 appointment, Moolman has held several senior positions within the group in Nigeria and in Iran and was CFO of MTN Nigeria before being appointed CEO. He will return to South Africa for the new role.
Moolman will remain on the board of MTN Nigeria and will in due course be appointed to other material subsidiary boards given his new group responsibility.
“Ferdi has been an exemplary leader of MTN Nigeria and has put the business on a sound growth platform for the future,” Mupita continued.
“He brings significant strategic, financial and operational experience to the new group risk role, where we want to ensure that our enterprise-wide risk management systems are continuously strengthened and remain resilient as we drive our growth strategy.”
