HiPipo Money

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MTN Uganda has received the prestigious accreditation by the Investors in People (IiP) Governing Board, United Kingdom as an Investor in People organization, making it one of the pioneer Companies in Africa to be recognized.

The assessment of MTN Uganda was carried out by a team of IiP assessors from the UK and their findings culminated in the accreditation. The assessment, conducted by Mr. Ken Baylis from Investors in People (IIP) UK, showed that MTN Uganda demonstrated a very high level of achievement against the Investors in People (IIP) Standard for people management processes and was thus accredited with the prestigious award. Similar accolades have also been won my MTN Nigeria and MTN Cameroon.

Announcing the new development, MTN General Manager Human Resources, Michael Sekadde said that MTN Uganda’s sustained success over the years has been built on the foundation of its People.

“This accreditation demonstrates our commitment towards developing and investing in our People through our unique Employee Value Proposition we call, ’The MTN Deal’ that has made the Company the leading Employer of Choice in Uganda”.

Sekadde further alluded to the recognition of MTN Uganda with the Best Training and Development Award for 2012 by the Federation of Uganda employers (FUE), which further demonstrates the company’s philosophy of continuous investment in its People to achieve Performance Excellence.

“At MTN Uganda, we believe that the role our people play in the success of the Company is very fundamental. Without the appropriate people and the right support practices in place, the Company cannot create an environment where they can deliver the Company’s Vision. That is why we are committed to invest in our people through a robust training and development strategy,” he added.

The Investors in People (IIP) Assessment is one of the World’s leading People Management Standards. It is a Business Improvement Tool designed to assist Organizations develop high performance through its people. ‘Investors in People’ is a proven methodology that leads to increased business performance and productivity.

The Assessment involves evaluating organizations to ensure that People Systems, Processes and Procedures are sufficiently embedded in the Organization. It focuses on areas such as; Understanding Business Strategy at all levels, Planned Learning and Development to achieve Business Objectives, People Management Strategies that promote equality, Managers capabilities and competencies to effectively manage people, Creating effective managers who can lead and develop people, Recognizing and valuing people, Encouraging people to make decisions as well as Effective Learning and Development practices and Investment in Talent.

Commenting on this achievement, the MTN Uganda Chief Executive Officer, Mazen Mroué said that the company was particularly delighted by the accreditation as it reinforces MTN Uganda’s position as an Employer of Choice. “We are proud that three of our MTN Group Operations have been accredited, and MTN Uganda is one of them,” he said.

He pointed out that the E-Live Platform which is an e-Learning Tool that was launched in 2008 is one such initiative to foster Self-learning and Development of employees. “This initiative has enhanced the Web based learning for our employees at the Workplace and has enhanced their knowledge and skills,” Mroué added.

Elaborating further, he said that the Company’s Talent Management Strategy that ensures a pool of future Succession pipeline had been implemented successfully which has also led to increased Career development and up skilling of the Ugandan work-force across all the divisions in the Company.

The MTN Group as a leading Employer of Choice in most of its Operations in the emerging markets took a Strategic decision in 2012 to evaluate the quality of its People Management practices across its operating Units with the aim to benchmark these practices against world class standards of People Management.

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About MTN Uganda

Launched in 1998, MTN Uganda is the leading communications operator in Uganda, offering Mobile and Fixed telecommunications, Mobile Money Services and Internet Service Provisioning. As of 30 June 2013, MTN Uganda recorded 8 million subscribers across Uganda. Visit us at www.mtn.co.ug  and for our football fans www.mtnfootball.com . Customers can also follow us on www.youtube.com/mtnug  and www.twitter.com/mtnugandacare  for assistance.

About the MTN Group

Launched in 1994, the MTN Group is a leading emerging market operator, connecting subscribers in 22 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The MTN Group is listed on the JSE Securities Exchange in South Africa under the share code: “MTN.” As of 30 June 2013, MTN recorded 201.5 million subscribers across 22 countries. Visit us at www.mtn.com  , www.mtnbusiness.com  , www.mtnmmo.com   and for our football fans www.mtnfootball.com

Kampala, Uganda – 14^th August, 2013

MTN Uganda’s half-year results show continued performance improvement as it passes the 8 million customer landmark

MTN Group’s Interim results, for the six-month period to 30 June 2013, that were announced this morning shows that MTN is well positioned for improved organic growth. MTN Group’s results were supported by strong organic growth from Uganda with a 15.4% increase in year-on-year revenue. MTN is a leading emerging markets operator, connecting more than 200 million people in 22 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It is at the forefront of global technological changes, delivering a bold, new Digital World to its customers.

Announcing the MTN Group results and the achievement of 200 million customers, the Group President and CEO, Sifiso Dabengwa said, “We’ve reached this important milestone a year before we celebrate 20 years of connecting people and economies, from South Africa, where MTN was started in 1994, to South Sudan, our most recent market”.

The results reflect a challenging operating environment given the sustained global economic slowdown, highly competitive mobile markets and pricing pressures, which have seen average voice tariffs across our markets fall 29.5% year-on-year (YoY) in US dollar terms. Despite these challenges, our substantial investment in network infrastructure and robust subscriber growth position us well for improved organic growth.

Highlights from MTN Uganda show an increase in its subscriber base by 4.4% to 8 million from 7.7 million at the end of December 2012, driven by strong promotional activity, a reduction in churn and the continued success of the MTN Zone offering.

MTN Uganda’s revenue increased by 15.4%, supported by strong data revenue growth. SMS revenue declined 14.6% as customers opted for newer data-driven social media platforms to communicate and as internet browsing increased. This positively impacted mobile data revenue, which increased 57.4%, supported by a simplified data bundles offering and upgraded internet speeds, regional data exhibitions and a strong performance from MTN Mobile Money. MTN Mobile Money recorded a 51% increase in subscribers and more than 25 million transactions per month.

Commenting on the results, MTN Uganda CEO Mazen Mroué said, “I am happy to note that the results announced earlier today show a steady performance for the MTN Group and particularly for MTN Uganda which has passed its 8 million customer landmark”.

MTN Uganda’s focus over the last year has been on Network Quality, the rollout of innovative Products and Services and improvement of Customer Experience.

During the last 15 years, MTN has made major investments to its infrastructure in Uganda. MTN Uganda launched the first mobile money service in Uganda with tremendous success, introduced 3G+ and 4G LTE, expanded the mobile distribution foot print, and greatly enhanced the mobile core, radio capacity and infrastructure technology. Furthermore, it extended the fibre network backbone and built regional switching centres in the East, West, North and Central regions.

In terms of infrastructure, last year MTN Uganda completed an additional 600km of fibre infrastructure closing the year with 2,800km of fibre to provide the capacity for high speed data connectivity and wider National coverage of 3G+ mobile data services that extend internet access to the rural areas of Uganda.

“I would like to congratulate the MTN Uganda staff for their contribution and support in achieving these positive results. At MTN we recognize our staff as a key asset in enabling this success”, Mroué added.

A key indicator of this excellence can be seen through a number of Awards that the company has received over the past couple of months showing endorsement from both its customers and other stakeholders.

Last week, MTN Uganda received three awards from Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA) including Best Telecom Company, Best Money Transfer Services and Best Internet Service Provider 2013. This came just a few weeks after MTN Uganda was recognized as Uganda’s leading Super Brand where MTN was also recognized in the Telecommunications, Internet, Computers and Technology category. At this same award ceremony, MTN Mobile Money was also recognized under the financial category, ranking closely to some banks and other financial institutions.

Earlier in April, MTN Uganda was also voted as the Best Mobile Telecom provider of the year (2012) at the 2013 Uganda Responsible Investment (URI) awards.

“The MTN Uganda leadership team is fully aligned and committed to support the staff to continue performing and excelling to ensure that we are able to deliver even better results by the end of the year,” Mroué said.

He added that MTN Uganda will continue to invest in Uganda to ensure that it lives up to its vision of leading the delivery of a bold, new Digital World to our customers. MTN Uganda is embracing this vision through constant enhancements to our Data Network to deliver World-class Internet and make our customers’ lives a whole lot brighter.

To celebrate this achievement, and to continue giving back to the communities that have supported MTN over the years, the Group President and CEO, Mr. Sifiso Dabengwa, also announced a bold R200 million initiative to improve the quality of education across our markets in Africa and the Middle East.

“This is our opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to social development. Due to the lack of access to quality education and infrastructure, and low literacy rates in most of the countries we operate in, we will direct a significant amount of our corporate social (CSI) spend towards education over the next two years,” Dabengwa commented.

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For a detail review of the MTN Group Interim Results please visit www.mtn.com

About MTN Uganda

Launched in 1998, MTN Uganda is the leading communications operator in Uganda, offering Mobile and Fixed telecommunications, Mobile Money Services and Internet Service Provisioning. As of 30 June 2013, MTN Uganda recorded 8 million subscribers across Uganda. Visit us at www.mtn.co.ug and for our football fanswww.mtnfootball.com. Customers can also follow us on www.youtube.com/mtnug andwww.twitter.com/mtnugandacare for assistance.

About MTN Group

Launched in 1994, the MTN Group is a leading emerging market operator, connecting subscribers in 22 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The MTN Group is listed on the JSE Securities Exchange in South Africa under the share code: “MTN.” As of 31 March 2013, MTN recorded 201.5 million subscribers across 22 countries. Visit us atwww.mtn.com

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MTN Uganda has received three awards from Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA) including Best Telecom Company, Best Money Transfer Services and Best Internet Service Provider 2013.

This comes just a few weeks after MTN Uganda was recognized as Uganda’s leading Super Brand where MTN was also recognized in the Telecommunications, Internet, Computers and Technology category. At this same award ceremony, MTN Mobile Money was also recognized under the financial category, ranking closely to some banks and other financial institutions.

The KACITA Awards announcement was made at a function which took place on Friday 9th August 2013 at Hotel Africana. MTN Uganda was applauded for its continued adherence to quality products, standards and excellent service provisioning to its customers. The event was presided over by the Minister of Trade and Industry Hon. Amelia Kyambade who represented the Vice President of Uganda, Hon. Edward Ssekandi.

Commenting on the Awards, MTN Chief Executive Officer, Mazen Mroué attributed the accolades to the continued dedication from MTN staff and the support from its valued customers.

“We are honored to win these awards in recognition of our continued efforts towards making the lives of our customers a whole lot brighter. We pledge to continue to work together with KACITA and the Government of Uganda as developmental partners to further support business communities in and around Kampala. The traders and Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are a key facet of our economy as they play a fundamental role in the development of the country,” Mroué said.

Earlier in April, MTN Uganda was also voted as the Best Mobile Telecom provider of the year (2012) at the 2013 Uganda Responsible Investment (URI) awards ceremony held at the Imperial Royal Hotel in Kampala.

According to Public Opinions the organizer of the Uganda Responsible Investment awards, MTN was voted for by the people of Uganda in appreciation and recognition of its contribution towards the promotion of international best practices and standards in their day-to-day operations.

KACITA Spokesperson Issa Ssekito said the Awards which are held annually are intended to honour products that enforce standards and continue to be innovative in order to deliver customer satisfaction.

All selected Brands that were entered for the awards were nominated by the public before verification by Uganda National Bureau of Standards for certification. The public were again asked in a random survey why they prefer/think of each of the brands against the others. This method comprised 60% of the selection while 40% was collected through SMS messages that were collected and tabulated by audit firm, Ernst & Young.

This year, the KACITA Awards were sponsored by Coca Cola, Nile Breweries and UMEME.

About MTN Uganda

Launched in 1998, MTN Uganda is the leading communications operator in Uganda, offering Mobile and Fixed telecommunications, Mobile Money Services and Internet Service Provisioning. As of 31 March 2013, MTN Uganda recorded 7.95 million subscribers across Uganda. Visit us at www.mtn.co.ug  and for our football fans www.mtnfootball.com  Customers can also follow us on www.youtube.com/mtnug  and www.twitter.com/mtnugandacare  for assistance.

About MTN Group   

Launched in 1994, the MTN Group is a leading emerging market operator, connecting subscribers in 22 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The MTN Group is listed on the JSE Securities Exchange in South Africa under the share code: “MTN.” As of 31 March 2013, MTN recorded 197.4 million subscribers across 22 countries. Visit us at www.mtn.com

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·         Exclusively dedicated to telenovelas, Telemundo brings dramatic storylines, exotic locations and glamorous personalities to Africa, under the tagline: “Feel the passion”

·         From August 12 will reach DStv and GOtv customers across the African continent

The channel’s division of NBCUniversal International Television today announced the launch of Telemundo, the popular telenovela channel, in Africa. From Monday 12 August, the exciting new channel will be an addition to the DStv Access, Family, Compact, Compact Plus (where available) and Premium bouquets, on 118. Telemundo will also be available on channel 13, on GOtv Plus (where available).

Telemundo will exclusively air telenovelas with the tagline: “Telemundo – Feel the Passion.”

Nico Meyer, MultiChoice Africa CEO said, “We are delighted to be launching Telemundo as it increases the range of programming available to DStv and GOtv subscribers. Telenovelas are a popular entertainment format and we want to provide a dedicated channel where subscribers can go to find this kind of programming. The launch forms part of MultiChoice Africa’s commitment to provide viewers in Africa with a wide channel line-up and to ensure that they have a broad variety of genres to choose from.”

Telemundo in Africa will be dedicated to the most compelling Spanish language telenovelas, offering DStv and GOtv customers a dramatic rollercoaster of romance, mystery, action and adventure. Telemundo will bring the world of exotic locations and glamorous personalities into African homes.

“Telenovelas are an editorial and television force internationally and we are particularly excited to bring Telemundo to Africa exclusively with DStv and GOtv,” says Colin McLeod, Managing Director Emerging Markets, Universal Networks International. “Together we believe we can help to drive multi-channel television to an even broader market. With the launch of Telemundo viewers will have another great reason to tune into DStv and GOtv.”

At launch, viewers can look forward to fascinating stories of love, success and betrayal with high quality production values in telenovelas including Aurora, Precious Rose, My Heart Beats for Lola and Behind Closed Doors.  

Telemundo will be fully localised for the African market with full dubbing of Spanish-language programming in English for South Africa and Sub-Saharan countries.

Telemundo becomes the fifth channel brand from Universal Networks International to launch in Africa, joining the recently refreshed channels – Universal Channel, E! Entertainment Television and The Style Network, and movies channel, Studio Universal.  Further, NBCUniversal News Group also operates CNBC channels across the continent.

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By Mark Zuckerberg

(Condensed and edited by Jim Edwards / Business Insider, from his remarks to investors on July 24, 2013.)

We made some really good progress this quarter with the growth of – in the growth and engagement of our community, the release of new products like Instagram video and advertising growth, especially on mobile.

When it comes to mobile, I’m very pleased with the results. We now have more daily actives on mobile than on desktop. Nearly half a billion people use Facebook on their phones everyday and soon we’ll have more revenue on mobile than on desktop as well. This progress is the result of investments we started making more than a year-ago and in some cases years ago.

One of the questions I frequently get asked are what are the big changes we want to make in the world over the next 5 or 12 years? Now that we’ve connected a 1 billion people, what is the next big ambition? There are three main goals I would like us to achieve. Connect everyone, understand the world and help build the knowledge economy.

Connecting everyone is about growing our community to reach the next 5 billion people. Our mission is to give all people the power to share and make your world more open and connected. And that means everyone. Not just product in developed countries. Most people in the world, they only had the smartphones or data access, but we know that we want to be connected.

We are focused on making this possible, while also strengthening engagement within our existing community. Understanding the world is that helping people share not just day-to-day updates like text messages and photos, but also building up long-term knowledge about the world. But what people are interested in, which restaurants are good, which hotels your friend’s have stayed out and so on.

We should be able to build intelligent services that help you use your network that could answer lots of questions  … I want to create our community to create a graph of all that understanding to power this intelligence.

Building the knowledge economy is about helping people create companies and jobs, using information. The way I see our advertising product, we’re not just building a strong monetization engine for our Company. We are creating tools to enable new growth jobs and businesses, [using the Facebook] Platform to support a larger economic shift in the world based on knowledge and information.

I’m proud of the work we’re doing here to help developers create apps to help local businesses, find customers, to help great brand tell their stories and this is the core part of our mission. Now let’s talk about the progress we’ve made in each of these areas. Starting with connecting everyone. The Facebook community has grown steadily this quarter, adding 45 million new monthly actives and the number of monthly active is steady or increasing across demographics and countries.

Facebook helps to maintain your real identity in relationship, which are universal needs.

Next, let’s talk about building more useful services on the path to understanding the world. The newest product I’m most excited about from our last quarter is Instagram video. Adding video fits really naturally with the Instagram mission of capturing and sharing the world’s moments. It’s off to a great start. People are already uploading hours of video to Instagram every minute. I’m really proud of the team and I think they did a great job with this product.

When I first talked to Kevin about this, he had a really smart insight. Instagram has always been about helping people capture moments in a way they’re proud of. Filters were necessary for photos because when Instagram started, most phone cameras weren’t good enough to take high quality photos. But lack of filters isn’t what’s holding back videos from being great. It’s that they’re shaky and feel unprofessional.

Kevin realized that if we can deliver a product that helps people produce stable videos that would really change the landscape and I think it already is. Now some products that video fit into the flow of what people are doing and they take off quickly. Others like Graph Search and Home are completely new kinds of products and they’re just going to take longer to develop.

I’ve used the right strategy to have a balance of long-term foundational new products in ones that fit in immediate demand. We’re committed to building all of these into market-leading products.

Finally, let’s talk about building the knowledge economy and what that means for our core business. This quarter has been a strong period for us. A lot of new businesses have signed up to advertise with us and we now have more than 1 million active advertisers. Our News Feed Ad products are working well for them.

One of the things I watch most closely is the quality of our ads and peoples’ sentiment around them. Right now ads on average make up about 5% or 1 in 20 stories in News Feed. We haven’t measured a meaningful drop in satisfaction when we ask people about their experience with Facebook. We’re comparing that to the result we get when we ask the same question to people using a version of Facebook with no feed ads at all.

With that said, in recent studies people have told us that they noticed the ads more, so we’re going to invest more in improving the quality. Our top priority is to expand the number of marketers and overall demand in our system rather than just increasing the number of ads that we show. We believe that this will help us improve the quality of the ads that we show by creating a more competitive auction and this will create the best experience for people who use our products, the best returns for more marketers and the best results for us.

So that’s my update for this quarter. We had a lot of progress in the last three months on growing our community engagement, releasing a successful major product and generating strong financial results. This quarter also marks the end of our first year as a public company and I think we created a good foundation for the future.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who works at Facebook and everyone who’s a part of this great community. You are all helping to connect the world and push it forward.

I think we’re early. And one of the interesting things over the past six months or so is reaching 1 billion people was this big rallying cry for the company for a long period of time. And I think as we’ve passed that, we’ve seen the ambition that the company has grow. And reaching 1 billion users was a great first thing to focus on because no one had ever built a service that had 1 billion active people who were signed in and had real identity before.

But in a way it’s actually kind of just an abstract, there’s nothing magical about 1 billion. The real goal is to connect everyone in the world and help people map out everything that there is. Well, I think what we’re seeing is as some of the products succeed is just the ambition increased to be able to do more of these and taking on more longer term things.

Hiring great people especially engineers is one of the biggest challenges that any technology company has. We’re doing really well against the hiring goals that we have. But I mean there was a systemic issue where our country doesn’t produce the volume of engineers that the companies would want to hire. And I think that that’s a lot of what you hear these companies talking about. We’re doing really well competitively right now.

Everyday we ship a lot of tweaks to the products, or small changes to existing products. Then there are going be to products like Instagram video, which is really doing well and it fits very naturally into the current flow of how people use Instagram to capture moments that they’re proud of. So that makes sense. I think the team did a really good job there. The thing is like Home and Graph Search are really new used cases. I mean in the case of Home, it’s a new category of product that’s different from anything that exist out there and I think of its more a seed that we’re planting that its going to create completely new pillar of the ecosystem rather than drafting off behavior that people already have in the system today. So, I definitely think that we just have to look at this over the long-term. And it’s very – when we’re building models for the Company and we basically think that it’s going to be something that we will invest in for years. And we expect these to become marketing – market leading products and they’re doing things that no-one else really has,

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In Photo: Isa Kajubi, MTN Manager Services hand out a donation of assorted items to students at Bilal Islamic Institute in Kakiri on Wednesday. This was part of MTN’s drive to give out to the muslim communities in and around Kampala as they mark the holy month of Ramadan. Looking on in a coat is  Haji Musa  Kalunda one of the Institute Directors. The initiative aimed at creating a celebratory mood around the holy month of Ramadan was launched last Friday with a donation to Luzira prison Muslim community.