Some executives climb ladders. Karl Toriola seems to build bridges: across languages, across markets, across the restless energy of African telecom. His latest crossing: MTN Group has appointed him Vice President for Francophone Africa, handing him oversight of Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Congo.
Toriola is not new to this terrain. Before becoming CEO of MTN Nigeria in 2021, he spent years as the Group’s vice president for West and Central Africa. His return to a broader continental role signals both experience and trust in his ability to steady complex markets.
Trust, after all, has been his calling card. Under his watch, MTN Nigeria became the company’s crown jewel, delivering double-digit growth in data, fintech, and network expansion. Nigeria’s revenues surged by nearly 38 per cent, while neighbouring Ghana doubled its earnings during the same period.
The expansion reflects MTN’s strategy to lean on West Africa, where growth remains vibrant, even as South Africa slows. Alongside Toriola’s appointment, Ferdinand Moolman takes the helm of MTN South Africa, and Yolanda Cuba steps in as deputy CEO, moves that underline a deliberate strengthening of leadership.
Yet beyond boardrooms and earnings calls, Toriola’s story carries the cadence of engineering roots and royal lineage. A graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University and the University of Wales, he is also a prince of Modakeke in Osun State, bound as much to tradition as to technology.
From Ericsson to Econet, from Congo Brazzaville to Cameroon, his career has mirrored the telecom boom that reshaped Africa. Each post seemed to prepare him for the next, each success laying the foundation for the continent-spanning stage he now occupies.
And so, at a moment when networks knit Africa’s future together, Toriola stands not merely as an executive but as a bridge himself: between old towns and new towers, between ancestral crowns and fibre-optic cables, between the promise of connection and the business of making it real.
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