MTN’s chief executive, Ralph Mupita, is trying to calm a fight that’s spreading from politics into business. The root cause is a string of anti-immigrant attacks in South Africa, which has angered people across the continent and especially in Nigeria. In response, there’s been a growing push on Nigerian social media to boycott companies seen as South African — and MTN, as Africa’s biggest telecom operator and a company founded in South Africa, has become the obvious target.
Mupita’s argument is essentially that this punishes the wrong company. He’s framed MTN as a continental business rather than a South African one, pointing out that the bulk of its money is made outside South Africa, in countries like Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda. His position is that boycotting a company like MTN would mainly hurt jobs and digital services in the very countries doing the boycotting, while doing little to South Africa itself. He’s used this moment — speaking ahead of a migration dialogue organized by South Africa’s Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation — to call for African governments to lean on cooperation, legal protections for migrants, and economic integration instead of letting anger spill over into corporate boycotts.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum — it’s tangled up with a real diplomatic rift. Nigeria has been flying its citizens home from South Africa because of the violence, and Nigerian officials have publicly noted what they see as a double standard: South African companies operate freely and safely in Nigeria, while Nigerians in South Africa have faced attacks and discrimination. That imbalance is a big part of why the anger has been directed at South African brands rather than just at the South African government.
