Women To Fill 70% Of Our Vacant Positions —MTN

Nigeria’s biggest telecom company has said that going forward, 70 per cent of its employment at all levels will be occupied by women.

The Chief executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, Karl Toriola, said this on Thursday during the Chief Executive Officer Round table organised by the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) and monitored by THE WHISTLER.

The company which has 38.06 per cent of telecom market share made a public offer of 575 million shares in the company, at an entry price of N169 per share.

The offer which opened on December 1, 2021 saw 78 per cent women participation, according to Toriola.

The CEO revealed that 80 per cent of the subscriptions were made by people under the age of 40.

“The Offer was in line with MTN Group’s commitment to reduce its shareholding in MTN Nigeria from 78.8 per cent to 65 per cent over time,” the company had said.

Currently, over 6.6 million Nigerians directly or indirectly are shareholders in MTN Nigeria.

Toriola said the essence of selling the shares to Nigerians was never about raising capital, but to institutionalise MTN Nigeria as a Nigerian entity.

“I believe we are really accepted as a Nigerian company that is going nowhere,” the CEO said adding “it reinforced the perception of investors around our governance structures, governance compliance risk management.”

To achieve new headways, Toriola told the panel that going forward, 70 per cent of MTN’s employment from board members to other staff will be women.

The telecom giant believes that the move would help in reaching the goal of gender balance by the end of 2030.

Toriola said, “That’s why MTN specifically has a shared value within our vision 2025 and I will speak to two of them. One is gender balance, by 2030 we will have gender balance across all levels of the organisation from the board right to the bottom. That means 70 per cent of our recruitment has to be women from now till them.

He said the second requires “2040 net zero emission. That means everybody in our supply chain needs to comply with that.”

The company made the net zero commitment back in February 2021.