MTN is South Africa's most valuable brand at $5,345bn, Kantar finds

MTN is South Africa’s most valuable brand. Kantar values it at US$5.345 billion in its 2026 BrandZ Top 30 Most Valuable South African Brands ranking, an increase of 124% since 2024.

The group announced the ranking in its own statement on 29 July 2026.

Kantar is a global research and analytics company. Its BrandZ method combines a company’s financial performance with consumer perceptions to arrive at a value for the brand, and to assess how much future growth that brand might carry. The 2026 South African study draws on the views of more than 49 000 consumers, across 890 brands and 57 categories.

What the number measures

BrandZ is not a revenue figure and not a market capitalisation. It is an estimate of what the brand itself contributes to the business, built from financial data and from what consumers say about the brand. That makes the 124% gain a measure of how the MTN name is valued in the market, not of what the company earned.

For a group that sells airtime, data and mobile money across Africa, the brand is one of its largest assets, and the ranking is a market-facing statement about it.

The top placing follows Brand Finance’s 2026 rankings, which named MTN South Africa’s and Africa’s most valuable brand for the 13th consecutive year. The two rankings use different methods, and together they give the group two independent valuations at the top of the South African table.

Ambition 2030 and the customer

MTN says the recognition arrives as it begins the next phase of its strategy under Ambition 2030, with a renewed focus on customer experience and on extending digital and financial inclusion across Africa.

“We appreciate this recognition and are grateful to our customers for the confidence they continue to place in MTN, and to our people and partners for the work that earns it every day.”

That is MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita, in the group’s statement.

“As we deliver Ambition 2030, we remain focused on delivering a consistently better customer experience, extending digital and financial inclusion and creating meaningful value across our markets. By connecting people, businesses and communities, we will continue to support shared growth and Africa’s progress.”

Why a brand ranking matters to a phone bill

Brand value is not a line on a customer’s statement. What sits behind it is. A brand is worth what it is worth because people keep buying, and in South African telecommunications they keep buying data, airtime and mobile money from a small number of networks that compete hard on price, coverage and service.

MTN’s own framing of the ranking is that the confidence behind it has to keep being earned through the experience and value the company delivers. That is the part of the announcement a customer can hold the group to, because it is the part that shows up in network quality, in the cost of a gigabyte, and in how quickly a query is resolved.

The group’s reach is also its exposure. It operates across multiple African markets, and the digital and financial inclusion it says it wants to extend is the same ground on which mobile money, data pricing and competition authorities across the continent are watching closely.

MTN Group published the announcement on its own site at https://www.mtn.com/mtn-ranked-south-africas-most-valuable-brand-by-kantar-brandz. The figures in this report are the ones that statement carries, and no others.

What to watch

The next phase of Ambition 2030 is where the ranking meets the road. MTN has put customer experience at the centre of that plan, and the group’s next set of results and its next BrandZ placing are the two points at which the market will test whether the brand’s value and the customer’s experience are moving in the same direction.

Source: MTN Group. Read the original item.