A decade ago, selling off tower assets was the smart play in African telecoms. Operators like MTN were under pressure to slim down their balance sheets, reduce capital intensity, and let specialist tower companies take on the headache of managing physical infrastructure while freeing up cash for the core business of selling minutes, data, and mobile money. IHS Towers was born from exactly that logic — and it grew into one of the world’s largest independent tower companies, partly on the back of assets that MTN itself once owned.
Today, MTN wants them back.
In one of the most consequential deals in African technology and telecommunications in years, MTN Group has announced an agreement to acquire 100% of IHS Holding Limited — the company behind IHS Towers — in an all-cash transaction valuing the tower operator at an enterprise value of approximately $6.2 billion. The offer price of $8.50 per ordinary share has been unanimously accepted by IHS’s Board of Directors, who have recommended that shareholders vote in favour of the deal. The transaction, if completed, will result in the delisting of IHS from the New York Stock Exchange and its transformation into a wholly owned subsidiary of MTN.
This is not a small footnote in the African infrastructure story. It is the headline.
The Deal Architecture
MTN already holds approximately 24.7% of IHS Towers, meaning this deal is effectively about acquiring the remaining ~75% of the company it doesn’t yet own, through a cash merger. The funding structure is deliberately engineered not to require new equity issuance at the MTN Group level — a critical signal to shareholders who might otherwise worry about dilution.
The $6.2 billion transaction will be funded through three channels: the rollover of MTN’s existing stake in IHS (avoiding the need to sell and re-buy), approximately $1.1 billion in cash from MTN, and approximately $1.1 billion drawn from IHS Towers’ own balance sheet, alongside the rollover of existing IHS debt. IHS will be required to maintain a minimum cash balance of $355 million at closing — a guardrail that speaks to the complexity of threading this needle financially.
Critically, two conditions must first be met. IHS has announced the sale of its Latin American tower operations — roughly 8,860 telecom tower sites in Brazil and Colombia — to Macquarie Asset Management for approximately $952 million. The completion of both that deal and IHS’s Latin American fibre divestment are prerequisites for the MTN acquisition to close. Stripped of its Latin American footprint, what remains is a pure-play African tower portfolio: nearly 29,000 high-quality towers spread across five of MTN’s most important markets on the continent.
The transaction is expected to close in 2026, subject to IHS shareholder approval and regulatory sign-off in the relevant markets.
The Numbers Behind the Premium
The $8.50 per share price carries a notable premium, but the figure means different things depending on your reference point.
It represents a 239% premium over IHS Towers’ share price at the announcement of the company’s strategic review on March 12, 2024 — a period initiated during sustained geopolitical and macroeconomic volatility in key operating markets. That’s a striking number and reflects how significantly IHS’s stock had been beaten down before the strategic review process began.
Measured against more recent trading, it represents a 3% premium to IHS’s closing share price on February 4, 2026 — the last day before Bloomberg reported on the plans — and a 9.7% premium to the 30-day volume-weighted average price as of that date.
The muted near-term premium reflects the fact that news of the negotiations had already been circulating. MTN released a cautionary announcement on February 5, 2026, prompting IHS to confirm publicly that discussions were ongoing, while noting the approach was non-binding and that no certainty existed that a transaction would be agreed upon. By the time the deal was formally announced this morning, much of the premium had already been priced into the stock.
Shareholder Support: Building Toward the Two-Thirds Threshold
For the deal to proceed, MTN needs a minimum two-thirds approval from voting IHS shareholders. The pathway to that threshold is already meaningfully de-risked.
MTN, which already owns approximately 24% of IHS Towers, has agreed to vote its shares in support of the deal. Wendel, a long-term IHS shareholder, has also provided a letter of support, securing over 40% shareholder backing for the transaction. Two-thirds of the vote remains the formal hurdle, but arriving at the starting line with 40% already in the bag is a significant structural advantage.
Upon completion of the transaction, IHS Towers’ ordinary shares will no longer be publicly listed, and IHS Towers will become a wholly owned subsidiary of MTN.
Why MTN Is Reversing Course — and Why Now
To understand the strategic logic of this deal, you need to understand how African telecom infrastructure got to where it is today.
Through the 2010s, the “tower sale-and-leaseback” model swept through the industry globally, but found particularly fertile ground in Africa. Telecom operators — capital-hungry, operating in volatile currency environments, and under pressure from investors demanding leaner balance sheets — sold their tower assets to specialist companies like IHS, American Tower, and Helios Towers. The logic was clean: unlock balance sheet value, reduce capital expenditure obligations, and focus on the core business. The tower companies, meanwhile, could generate steady rental income by leasing those same towers back to the operators — and to their competitors.
MTN was a willing participant. It sold tower assets. IHS grew, in part, on that foundation.
The proposed acquisition marks a notable reversal of MTN’s earlier infrastructure strategy. Now, the group is seeking to reintegrate those assets, internalising tower lease margins it currently pays to IHS and capturing future third-party revenue growth directly.
That internalisation of margin is arguably the most compelling financial rationale. Every month, MTN pays lease fees to IHS for towers that MTN’s network depends on. Owning those towers outright means those fees become internal cost savings — permanently. Add to that the ability to capture revenue from third-party operators who co-locate on those same towers, and the strategic maths shift materially in MTN’s favour.
By reintegrating the tower assets, MTN will be able to internalise the margin currently paid to IHS, benefit from current and future incremental third-party revenues, improve cost predictability and unlock significant long-term value embedded in its existing investment. MTN’s Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita framed it in terms of the continent’s future: “This proposed transaction is a pivotal step in further strengthening MTN Group’s strategic and financial position for a future where digital infrastructure will become ever more essential to Africa’s growth and development.”
The timing matters too. Global tower valuations have been compressed by elevated interest rates and emerging market currency pressures — the same headwinds that drove IHS’s share price into the ground and prompted the strategic review in March 2024. Buying distressed infrastructure at the bottom of the valuation cycle, funded primarily with IHS’s own balance sheet and rollover equity rather than expensive new capital, is a textbook counter-cyclical play.
What This Means for Africa’s Digital Infrastructure
If this deal closes, MTN will control the largest integrated tower platform on the African continent. Nearly 29,000 towers, spread across Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Cameroon, and other key markets, will sit under a single corporate roof — one owned by Africa’s dominant mobile operator.
The implications are vast. For MTN’s network strategy, the deal removes a layer of vendor dependence and gives the group direct control over one of the most critical inputs in mobile connectivity. For other mobile operators who co-locate on IHS towers — including MTN’s competitors — the question of how tower access will be managed by a vertically integrated MTN Group will need careful watching. Regulators in multiple markets will scrutinise whether an MTN-owned tower company can credibly serve competing operators without preferential treatment toward its own networks.
For the broader African tech ecosystem, the deal underscores a theme that is becoming increasingly prominent: the era of infrastructure fragmentation may be drawing to a close. Just as the continent’s largest tech markets — Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt — are asserting greater sovereign control over data flows and digital services, Africa’s largest telecoms company is asserting direct control over the physical layer of connectivity itself.
The towers that carry the signal for Africa’s next hundred million internet users may very soon belong to one company. MTN is betting that’s exactly where it wants to be.
