Our strategy
Our strategy continues to maintain our relentless focus on delivering great customer experience so we can continue to unlock growth and transform lives.
We transform lives across sub-Saharan Africa by providing essential telecoms and mobile money services that empower customers and their communities as well as foster digital and financial inclusion. Our business strategy is designed to ensure we continue to address the huge opportunities in our 14 markets and deliver sustainable, profitable growth that creates value for all our stakeholders.
Focusing investment and expertise to unlock opportunity
The six pillars of our strategy focus our investment and the expertise of our talented people on the core business activities that unlock opportunities for us and those around us. These pillars are underpinned by a continuous drive to keep optimising costs, meeting our sustainability objectives and investing in our talent.
At the heart of our strategy are our customers. Our success is driven by enriching their lives – which is why everything we do is designed to transform the customer experience.
Progress against our strategy
Here we report progress against the six pillars of our strategy.
- We describe progress against our sustainability strategy in our Sustainability Report 2026 – see www.airtel.africa
- Our strategic delivery is underpinned by a clear risk management framework – see Managing our risk.
Strengthen ‘go-to-market’
By applying a more disciplined, data-led approach to selling, we’re constantly strengthening our go-to-market engine. We actively leverage technology to simplify customer onboarding, improve acquisition quality and deepen customer engagement across our markets. This enables more consistent execution and improved customer lifetime value. Our distribution network remains a strategic asset, allowing us to extend reach, improve service accessibility and drive disciplined growth across urban and rural areas.
Our priorities
- Expand and optimise distribution footprint by scaling exclusive and multi-brand channels to improve coverage, proximity and availability
- Sharpen value propositions to drive usage and ARPU: segment-led propositions informed by data on affordability and propensity to spend
- Embed data-led selling by incorporating analytics and performance dashboards into frontline and partner tools to improve conversion, quality of acquisition and sales productivity
- Equip our sales team with tools to drive targeted micro-marketing and execution excellence at the last mile
Our progress
- Continued expansion of exclusive kiosks/mini-shops and Airtel Money branches (AMBs), complemented by multi-brand outlets across urban and rural markets
- Expanded retail footprint of our directly owned touchpoints from 592 in 2024/25 to 741 in 2025/26 to better serve our high value customers and drive penetration of home broadband (HBB) products
- Rollout of enhanced sales app delivering real-time data-driven analytics to provide actionable insights to improve sales performance
- Our customer base growth accelerated by +10.5% year-on-year
- Smartphone penetration increased to 49.5% as of 31 March 2026
520,000+
activating outlets (+32.8% vs 2024/25)
183.5 million
total customer base (+10.5% vs 2024/25)
$3.1
ARPU (+12.8% in constant currency vs 2024/25)
Brilliant network experience
Our network remains a source of competitive advantage. We continue to strengthen our core infrastructure to build a resilient, safe and reliable network to deliver great experience to our customers.
This includes expanding 4G coverage, scaling 5G, densifying fibre footprint, integrating non-terrestrial network technologies, investing with discipline in spectrum and digital network planning.
Our priorities
- Ensure service availability and extend reliable connectivity even in remote areas through a mix of terrestrial and complementing non-terrestrial network technologies
- Ensure high availability and capacity of the 4G network by improving network uptime, densifying high-traffic corridors and strengthening capacity in growth clusters
- Future-proof the network through 5G and fibre rollout, building capacity, reducing latency and supporting high value retail, home and enterprise use cases
- Strengthen network resilience and service continuity by enhancing transmission diversity and disaster-recovery capabilities
- Digitise network planning and modernisation by deploying advanced digital planning and optimisation tools to improve rollout speed, quality and capital efficiency
Our progress
- Accelerated momentum by investing $884m capex predominantly in our network infrastructure and upgrades
- Leveraged satellite technology to provide reliable and cost-efficient backhauling
- Expanded coverage by deploying 3,600+ 4G sites and extended our fibre backbone by 3,200 km: 4G population coverage increased by 1.2% to reach 75.6% as of 31 March 2026
- Continued densification of high-traffic urban corridors and key growth clusters to improve customer experience
- Accelerated rollout of digital geolocation tool to enhance network planning and insights and accelerate fault resolution
40,378
infrastructure sites (+3,250 vs 2024/25)
39,770
4G/5G sites (+3,600 vs 2024/25)
81,900 km
of connecting fibre (+3,200 km vs 2024/25)
Must win markets
We have identified high-potential clusters across our markets as ‘must win markets’, given their significant contribution to growth and long-term value. In these clusters, we concentrate network and distribution investments to win market share at a micro-segment level with speed and precision.
Our priorities
- Urban growth clusters: deployed precision micro-marketing, lifecycle engagement and targeted propositions across dense urban areas, secondary towns and emerging suburbs to accelerate customer acquisition and retention
- Rural growth clusters: expanded coverage and distribution infrastructure complemented by initiatives to address affordability to unlock growth in low-penetration rural catchment areas
Our progress
- Urban growth acceleration supported by targeted capacity upgrades, customer lifecycle management and near-real-time marketing
- Added more than 800 sites in rural areas and strengthened distribution infrastructure footprint, accelerating our rural customer base growth
- Enabled affordability by launching handset subsidy programmes to accelerate smartphone adoption
17.5 million
net additions (+31.2% vs 2024/25)
107 million
urban customer base (+9.6% vs 2024/25)
14,500+
infrastructure sites in rural areas (+800 vs 2024/25)
Digitise and simplify
We’re focused on accelerating digital transformation to simplify customer journeys, scale self-care and embed data and AI across our ecosystem to unlock growth and serve our customers better.
Our priorities
- Scale digital adoption through the single-app strategy across mobile services and Airtel Money
- Simplify and digitise customer journeys to drive frictionless customer experience
- Scale AI-led customer engagement and workflow automation to improve personalisation, service quality and operational efficiency
- Continued investment in digital infrastructure, data and analytics capabilities, platform optimisation and security to support scale
Our progress
- MyAirtel app continues to anchor our unified digital gateway, driving meaningful volumes across recharges, bundles, peer-to-peer transfers and bill payments
- Introduced guided AI chatbots on MyAirtel app to resolve customer complaints
- Digital platforms and analytics improved speed and precision of execution. Greater use of digital platforms and analytics enabled faster time-to-market, more targeted offers, improved churn prediction and more effective cross-sell/upsell opportunities while improving commercial effectiveness and return on investment (ROI)
- Scaled digital infrastructure to support our AI ambition
10.5 million
customers using MyAirtel app (+55% vs 2024/25)
$8.3bn
total processed value (TPV) on MyAirtel app (+80% vs 2024/25)
Accelerate Airtel Money
We aim to accelerate the adoption of Airtel Money across all our markets to expand financial inclusion and unlock new growth vectors in payments and digital financial services.
Our priorities
- Strengthen our distribution network by expanding kiosks and dedicated Airtel Money branches (AMBs), ensuring customers have reliable access to cash and float
- Expanding our mobile money portfolio and advancing enterprise and digital payments, including merchant payments, loans, insurance, savings accounts and virtual cards
- Drive adoption and engagement through enhanced digital experience
- Scale merchant acceptance and everyday use cases, to embed Airtel Money into daily payments and commerce
Our progress
- Airtel Money scaled through strategic partnerships and expansion of everyday use cases
- Improved customer journeys across USSD and digital channels
- Continued expansion of our agent and distribution network, improving accessibility for customers
- Expanded the product portfolio, including savings, credit, insurance and remittances, deepening financial inclusion
- Ongoing investments in technology, security, compliance and operational efficiency
54.1 million
Airtel Money customers (+21.3% vs 2024/25)
49,000
AM exclusive distribution infrastructure outlets (+3.0% vs 2024/25)
$195bn+
total processed value (TPV) for Airtel Money (+35.2% in constant currency vs 2024/25)
$1,355m
Airtel Money revenue (+28.4% in constant currency vs 2024/25)
Scale home broadband (HBB) and enterprise
We’re unlocking significant growth opportunities by scaling HBB and enterprise services by strengthening our 5G and fibre networks to deliver reliable, resilient connectivity. This allows us to capture rising demand for high-speed fixed connectivity and digital services from households and enterprises.
Our priorities
- Invest in network infrastructure to support customer acquisition and retention
- Scale up sales/installation capabilities to promote fast, precise customer acquisition
- Build digital capabilities for improved efficiency at customer acquisition and servicing
Our progress
- Continued investment in network infrastructure to deliver excellent home broadband experience – doubled the number of 5G infrastructure sites and homes served by fibre
- Significantly scaled up sales channel, expanding both retail experience stores and direct sales force across top urban towns
- Fully digitised sales and installation operations from customer order to installation that has improved productivity and quality of onboarding
- Fully digitised service journeys through onboarding customers on MyAirtel app with self-service capabilities that have improved engagement
903,000
home broadband (HBB) customers (+86% vs 2024/25)
119%
home broadband (HBB) revenue growth in constant currency vs 2024/25
195 GB
home broadband (HBB) usage per customer per month in 2025/26