MTN Group CEO Rob Shuter.

Rob Shuter is leaving MTN Group at the end of his contract in March 2021.

MTN today announced the departure of its group president and CEO as part of its financial results for the year ended 31 December.

“The board thanks Rob for the contribution he has made, and continues to make, to MTN. The succession process will be concluded during the year, enabling a seamless handover,” reads the MTN statement.

The leading telco company in Africa also announced additional management changes, including the appointment of MTN group chief technology and IT officer Charles Molapisi to the group executive committee, and the fixed contract of group chief operations officer Jens Schulte-Bockum being extended until 31 March 2022.

MTN appointed Shuter as its new group president and CEO in 2016 but he only took to his role in 2017.

At the time, Shuter was CEO of the European cluster at the Vodafone Group. He has extensive experience in telecoms and banking, as he had held senior management roles at Vodacom, Standard Bank and Nedbank prior to joining Vodafone.

Dabengwa’s resignation came just two weeks after the company announced it faced a $5.2 billion (R78 billion) fine from the Nigerian Communications Commission for failing to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered SIM cards in the country. On 10 June 2016, after months of negotiations, MTN agreed to pay $1.671 billion (R25 billion) to the federal government of Nigeria, in six instalments over three years, to settle the fine.

In the current period under Shuter’s stewardship, MTN added 18 million customers to reach a total of 251 million, increased its data users by 17 million to 95 million and fintech customers grew by seven million to 35 million.