TCFD disclosures

Governance

Describe the Board’s oversight of climate-related risks and opportunities

The Board has an overall responsibility for the management of our climate-related risks and opportunities (CROs). Our Board maintains this oversight through two of its committees: the Audit and Risk Committee (ARC) and the Sustainability Committee. The ARC oversees our risk management processes, including the assessment and mitigation of CROs. See the Audit and Risk Committee report for details of our ARC meetings and the frequency of meetings in the year.

The Sustainability Committee meets every two months. It oversees the implementation of our sustainability strategy, including the climate response actions set out within the environmental pillar of the strategy. It is responsible for sustainability programmes and initiatives, budget requirements, and reviewing the development of performance objectives to track the achievement of both short- and long-term goals. The committee’s work also includes the consideration of climate impact with respect to the Group’s capital expenditure (capex) in line with the Group’s sustainability strategy as approved by the Board. During the year, there were no acquisitions or divestments in the Group’s business but, in case of any such event, appropriate climate consideration will fall within the remit of the committee’s work.

Our CEO currently chairs the Sustainability Committee and attends every ARC and the Executive Risk Committee (ERC) meetings. He provides a direct link to the management of CROs as does our Board sustainability champion, Annika Poutiainen, who also attends Board, ARC and Sustainability Committee meetings. Annika reports to the Board on the work of the Sustainability Committee and, together with the CEO, supported by relevant members of management, will seek approval for any actions.

Describe management’s role in assessing and managing climate-related risks and opportunities

Through the ERC, our leadership oversees our risk management processes, including the assessment and development of mitigation actions for CROs. The ERC meets every quarter. Our Executive Committee (ExCo) ensures that climate actions are integrated into our operational business strategy. The two components of our strategy towards CROs are reduction of GHG emissions and environmental stewardship. In light of this two-pronged approach, our chief technology officer and chief supply chain officer jointly lead ‘Our environment’ pillar of the sustainability strategy.

Our comprehensive asset audit shows that energy use from data centres, network operating centres and infrastructure sites constitute a large percentage of the total energy consumption within our business. So, our chief technology officer oversees the strategy to bring energy-efficient initiatives into our core operational processes. Furthermore, a significant number of our infrastructure sites are owned by towercos, and we lease space from them. Our chief supply chain officer leads our efforts to generate climate action from the towerco partners to achieve energy efficiency and reduce GHG emissions.

Our head of sustainability leads our climate-related programmes and ensures a seamless integration between our business strategy and climate response actions. The head of sustainability reports to the CEO who chairs the Sustainability Committee.

Strategy: risks and opportunities

Describe the climate-related risks and opportunities the organisation has identified over the short-, medium- and long term.

Following the work on our climate scenario analysis, our climate risks and opportunities are now aligned with our business model and the geographical spread of our operations. In assessing our climate risks and opportunities, we have taken a disaggregated approach. Whereas some physical risks apply to all our markets, there are certain climate risks that are peculiar to specific countries. For instance, the risks of tropical storms and cyclones are localised to Madagascar and Malawi within our country portfolio while the risk of extreme temperature increases, which negatively impact cooling costs, are more significant for countries located in arid regions such as Chad, Niger and parts of Northern Nigeria. These factors were built into our modelling process to ensure we get a credible assessment of our most significant climate risks, and they’re prioritised for the attention of our executive management and the Board.

Our climate scenario analysis has been conducted looking at three horizons – short-, medium- and long term. For medium term, we’ve considered a period between 5-10 years as this aligns with the Group’s planning time frame. The Group prepares a ten-year strategic business plan which is used for forecasting purposes and capital investment decisions, and aligns with the average life of our regulatory licences and network assets. Additionally, our medium-term carbon intensity reduction target for scope 1 and 2 emissions is set at ten years from 2022 baseline which also aligns with this medium-term timeframe. Consequently, we’ve taken timeframes of greater than ten years as ‘long term’ and periods less than five years as ‘short term’ in our scenario modelling. This ensures that our scenario planning periods align closely with our strategic business plans and carbon reduction targets. We’ve assessed each climate risk and opportunity for likelihood, velocity and financial materiality.

Describe the impact of climate-related risks and opportunities on the organisation’s businesses, strategy and financial planning

Our refreshed strategy incorporates sustainability as a key enabler. This reflects our ambition to deliver profitable growth in the long term by integrating sustainability into the core of our business strategy. ‘Our environment’ pillar, encompassing climate risks and opportunities, is one of the four pillars of our sustainability strategy. This highlights our commitment to minimise the impact of our operations on the environment.

Our strategic and financial planning processes are closely aligned with our sustainability strategy and our ambition to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 across our operations. Specifically, we’ve seen an acceleration of this integration between our strategic plans and climate response actions due to significant fuel price inflation in some of our markets which has put a strain on our operating costs. This has allowed us to take significant steps to accelerate our transition planning to renewable energy sources in collaboration with our towerco partners as part of our risk mitigation plans and strategic response to this risk. This example shows that our climate action plan and strategic planning processes are not separate processes but an integrated approach to do what is best for our business, our stakeholders and the environment.

In parallel, we continue to actively participate in industry initiatives, such as the GSMA’s Climate Action Taskforce and the biodiversity project group. Through these, we work with industry peers to find common solutions to address the climate crisis and the challenges faced by the industry players as they develop credible carbon emissions reduction plans.

Describe the resilience of the organisation’s strategy, taking into consideration different climate-related scenarios, including a 2^oC or lower scenario

In 2023/24, we conducted a scenario analysis exercise to assess the resilience of our business against the climate risks and opportunities we are faced with. The result of this scenario analysis is summarised below.

The scenario testing was done under three scenarios:

1. Current policies scenario: global temperature at c. 3^oC (no climate action)

2. High temperature scenario: global temperature greater than c. 3^oC (extreme case)

3. Net zero Paris Agreement-aligned scenario: global temperature at c. 1.5^oC (transition to net zero).

Transition risks

For transition risks, we tested current policies scenario (no climate action, global temperature at c. 3°C) and net zero Paris Agreement aligned scenario (transition to net zero, global temperature at approximately 1.5°C). We selected this scenario to test our transition risks as the likelihood of being confronted with transition risks will be higher in a net zero Paris-aligned scenario. Our analysis showed that the most material transition risks were:

• increases in operating costs arising from direct carbon price (including carbon taxes) on lease assets and network equipment, and
• potential introduction of carbon taxes in our operating markets.

To mitigate these risks, the Group would need to embrace early adoption of clean energy sources to mitigate the negative impact of to higher energy costs driven by direct carbon prices or taxes.

Physical risks

For physical risks, we tested current policies scenario (no climate action, global temperature at approximately 3°C) and high temperature scenario (extreme case, global temperature greater than approximately 3°C). We’ve selected the high temperature scenario to test our physical risks because as global temperature continues to rise, so would the negative impact of climate change resulting in extreme weather events capable of causing increasing damage to our physical infrastructure. From this scenario testing, the material physical risks identified were:

• increase in river and coastal flooding in our operating markets with the potential to disrupt operations 
• damage to physical infrastructure and negative impact on revenues
• increase in air temperature resulting in increased cooling requirements and, consequently, higher energy costs
• extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones peculiar to two of our markets: Madagascar and Malawi.

The outcome of this scenario means we would need to implement necessary business resiliency plans to protect our critical physical infrastructure such as data centres and office buildings against the risk of flooding and extreme weather events and develop ways to improve the efficiency of our cooling operations, including cleaner sources of energy to address increased cooling needs.

Opportunities

For opportunities, we tested current policies scenario (no climate action, global temperature at approximately 3°C) and net zero Paris Agreement-aligned scenario (transition to net zero, global temperature at approximately 1.5°C). This scenario was considered appropriate as the business will be more likely to benefit from the relevant opportunities of an early transition towards net zero than in a high temperature scenario.

Our most significant opportunities were improved cost efficiencies from adopting energy efficient and environmentally friendly technology or energy sources and improvement in share price valuation due to favourable investor sentiments as a result of actions taken by the Group to achieve net zero.

There has been no significant change in our business requiring a refreshed scenario analysis this year. Preliminary work is already underway to refresh the climate-related scenario analysis for the Group in the new financial year in line with best practice. We expect to publish the refreshed scenario analysis outcome in the Annual Report 2026. We will continue to monitor the evolution of the climate challenge across our business and countries of operations, and incorporate these into our refreshed climate-related scenario analysis to ensure our climate response plans are aligned to the challenges faced by our business.

Risk management

Describe the organisation’s processes for identifying and assessing climate-related risks

We have a robust enterprise risk management process which is uniformly implemented across all our operating subsidiaries. Our process for identifying and assessing climate-related risks follows our established risk management framework. The classification of climate risk has been completed using the TCFD’s recommendations around physical and transition risks. See Our pathway to TCFD aligned reporting for details of our enterprise risk management framework. Our climate risks identification process includes an assessment of existing legal obligations, for instance loan covenants, regulatory requirements in our operating jurisdictions and a continuous review of our external context to identify emerging risk themes that could have a material impact on our business.

As climate change has been recognised by the Board as an emerging risk, this receives the ongoing attention of the Sustainability Committee and the Audit and Risk Committee as part of our risk review process. We mitigate physical climate risks through our business continuity management processes as well as the current initiatives to address climate risks. The details of these initiatives are contained within the environmental pillar of our sustainability strategy – see the Sustainability Report 2025 on www.airtel.africa.

Describe the organisation’s processes for managing climate-related risks

The Group Executive Risk Committee (ERC) assesses and mitigates climate-related risks, with oversight by the Board through the Audit and Risk Committee and the Sustainability Committee. The Sustainability Committee directly oversees the implementation of our sustainability strategy, including climate-related actions and programmes related to our environmental objectives. The committee meets every two months. Materiality assessment for risk mitigation is carried out on the basis of financial impact as are other business risks. Those risks where financial materiality (or impact) cannot be readily assessed are assessed qualitatively.

Our head of sustainability is primarily responsible for the development and implementation of our climate response actions.

• See a detailed overview of our risk management process and framework

Describe how processes for identifying, assessing and managing climate-related risks are integrated into the organisation’s overall risk management

The process of identifying and managing climate-related risks follows our existing enterprise risk management framework which allows for a uniform approach across the Group for risk management. However, our process for climate risk assessment and prioritisation departs from our standard enterprise risk management process. We rely on the use of climate risk frameworks such as the TCFD to categorise our climate risks as well as various external climate data sources to assess the drivers of our climate risks and opportunities. We've been supported by an external advisory agency in developing impact assessment for various climate scenarios. The output feeds back into our risk governance and management processes allowing for a more robust climate risk discussion by our executive leadership and the Board of directors.

While we use impact and likelihood scales for assessing enterprise risk across our business, for climate risks we use three parameters for risk assessment – likelihood, velocity and potential financial impact. We use both qualitative and externally available quantitative data sets as part of our scenario analysis to determine the resilience of the business and for the prioritisation of climate risks.

We’ve identified appropriate quantitative metrics for measuring and tracking the impact of climate on our operations, and we will continue to review and identify other suitable metrics to reliably assess and measure our climate risks and opportunities on an ongoing basis.

Metrics and targets

Disclose the metrics used by the organisation to assess climate-related risks and opportunities in line with its strategy and risk management process

We use the following metrics to measure and assess the impact of climate-related risks and opportunities (CROs) on our business. We will continue to assess the suitability of additional metrics that can be reliably measured for a more robust assessment of our CROs.

We’ve considered cross-industry metrics as per the TCFD implementing guidance and the cross-industry metrics we report on currently are our absolute emissions for scopes 1, 2 and 3 and total energy consumption. We'll continue to assess the suitability of reporting on other cross-industry metrics in the future as appropriate. Additionally, we do not currently use any internal carbon price for reporting our carbon emissions.

Disclose scope 1, 2 and, if appropriate, scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the related risks

Since the launch of our sustainability strategy in October 2021, we’ve been focused on understanding our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. We’ve developed internal methodology to accurately capture and report on our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. For our scope 1 and 2 emissions data, where dependency on external partners is not required, we’re able to collect and report this data in line with our reporting cycle. For our scope 3 emissions data, which requires collection and verification from external partners, we’re only able to report this with a lag of one year to ensure our scope 3 data has been subjected to reasonable internal verification before it’s reported. Our scope 3 emissions data will be published when the full data is available from our partners and fully verified. We continue to engage with our partners to ensure full alignment of our climate agenda with their internal plans and commitments.

Describe the targets used by the organisation to manage climate-related risks and opportunities and performance against targets

In 2024/25, we continued to assess and refine our decarbonisation initiatives as part of our broader ambition to achieve net zero by 2050. We also remain focused on our near-term target¹ of reducing carbon emissions intensity² by 62% from 2022 baseline levels.

We continue to track carbon emissions intensity in the near term to reflect the continued growth in our business as we reach underserved communities to drive digital and financial inclusion. The Group considers reporting the reduction of absolute carbon emissions from the existing assets since 2022 baseline no longer adequate as it does not reflect the ongoing growth of the business.

During the reporting period, our absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions increased by 4.3% compared to the previous year. However, as of 31 March 2025, we achieved a 14% reduction in emissions intensity, reaching 3,013 tCO₂e/MW – down from our 2022 baseline of 3,515 tCO₂e/MW – and a 5% reduction compared to the previous year (3,175 tCO₂e/MW).

External challenges during the year impacted our ability to reduce carbon emissions intensity at the pace we had anticipated. In Zambia, a severe drought significantly reduced grid availability – from 24 hours to just six hours per day – requiring increased use of diesel generators to maintain service reliability. In Malawi, we took over energy provisioning for sites previously operated by tower companies (towercos), resulting in a reclassification of related emissions from scope 3 to scope 1 and 2.

After adjusting for these exceptional factors, we estimate that our carbon emissions intensity in 2024/25 would’ve declined by approximately 20% from 2022 baseline levels.

We remain committed to meeting our near-term target and continue to identify opportunities to reduce emissions as we work toward our 2050 net zero ambition as disclosed in our sustainability strategy. We'll continue to evaluate the identification of other suitable KPIs which are most aligned to our climate risks and opportunities. Members of our ExCo are financially incentivised to reduce our carbon footprint, and our incentive plan includes performance targets against achievement of our broader sustainability strategy. These incentives are linked to the key result areas (KRAs) and the long-term incentive plan (LTIP) of our ExCo members as part of the annual performance evaluation process. The incentive plan is designed to ensure continued focus and delivery of year-on-year tactical plans which are important for the delivery of our long-term climate commitments.

1 Target year for near-term reduction of emissions: 2032 (based on a 2022 baseline).

2 Emissions intensity is defined as scope 1 and 2 emissions (tCO₂e) per MW of network capacity.