By: Natasha Archary

To wrap up the year, Kaya Biz hosted a special C-Suite Discussion on the 2023 economic year on Tuesday, 05 December to reflect on whether South Africa won the year.
The conversation covered different aspects of the economy, companies and sectors to get a feel for how they performed in 2023.
Dineo Molefe, CFO of MTN SA covered a range of topics affecting the telecoms industry which was massively hit by the rolling blackouts.
With over 20-years experience in Financial Management, Dineo touched on the ripple effects of loadshedding, and how MTN had to splurge almost R5 billion to ensure customers remained connected during rolling blackouts.
“The South African networks are not built to handle loadshedding, if you compare it to countries like Nigeria where use of generators is just a pretty standard way of having power, South Africa was never in that dynamic.
So when loadshedding came to the fore, having that dependency on Eskom for us to be up and running, all of a sudden that’s not possible, it really meant we had to think differently to ensure our customers remain connected.”
Dineo says connectivity is a basic need, not a luxury, and there were a number of hurdles to overcome this year including crime.
The CFO of MTN SA said that criminals targeted a number of generators that the company had set up to mitigate the effects of loadshedding.
“We constantly look at the cost of communication for the customer, because what we want to do is make data accessibility affordable. So, you find that year-on-year our effective rate of data is reducing.
This helps the consumer use and purchase more data. What we are also doing is moving away from 3G technology and moving onto 4G and 5G, which means that the handsets you’re using can operate at higher speeds. We are finding that the average consumer is using more data than previous years.”
WATCH: Dineo Molefe covering some of the challenges the telecoms industry faced in 2023
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