Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Tato Muklante, and I look after Investor Relations for the MTN Group. It's my pleasure this afternoon to welcome you to the Annual Results Presentation for FY twenty '20, taking place during the afternoon for the first time rather than earlier in the day, as has been the case over the past few years. I trust that you've been able to access the presentation, which is available on our website along with our results. Please be assured as we present to you today that we are observing all necessary COVID-nineteen protocols, including social distancing.
2020 was indeed a year of great change for all of us, not only globally but also for the MTN Group as a business. It encourages us to adapt and change the way we do things and evolve the way we interact with each other. Last year, for example, we hosted our first ever virtual interim presentation. This year, we're taking it a step further by refreshing our annual results program. This aims to improve efficiencies and the flow of events for the benefit of all of our stakeholders, and this includes incorporating a broader base of shareholders into the live presentation.
So thank you for making the time to join us this afternoon. And again, I welcome to all of you who have joined us via the various platforms and especially the MTNers across our markets. Indeed, our performance over the last financial year was driven by the resilience of our people, along with the enhanced business model that we've entrenched over the past few years during what was undoubtedly a very challenging year. As we lap a year of having COVID-nineteen being a part of our daily lives, we can look back and take some pride in having worked together through the challenges. Fueled by our deep desire and ambition to be a force for progress in our markets in the markets that we serve, we managed to power through and deliver the results that we present to you today.
As a business, and we are truly grateful for all of the work that's walked this journey with us. Now if we move on to the order of business for the afternoon, we'll be unpacking the annual results in the following manner: MTN Group President and CEO, Ralf Mupita, he'll kick us off with an operational overview Then Sugin Perumal, who's our acting CFO, will present the highlights of our financial performance. Ralf will then come back and take us through an update of our strategy as well as the focus for 2021. We will then close off the session with a Q and A segment, with Ralfence again answering and responding to your questions. Please send these via the webcast Q and A as well as through our Twitter handle, which is MTNgroup.
Finally, in terms of the admin, you should be looking at our standard disclaimer and safe harbor statement, which covers the presentation for today. And so at this point, it is my pleasure to hand over to Ralph Mupita. Thank you.
Tato, thanks very much, and I just want to extend my own welcome to everybody who's joining us on the various media platforms for our results presentation today, and in particular, the 20,000 MTNers who have been behind the delivery of our results, of which Sogen and I are proud to represent them in delivering these results to broader stakeholders. And as Tato has mentioned, we've come through a very challenging year in 2020. I think all of us have experienced either directly or people we know close to who've had challenges with COVID-nineteen. Some have passed on and some have impaired health, I think it's appropriate just to recognize the challenges that we are facing within our broader society. As Tatu said, let me kick off with a view of our operational results, starting with the financial highlights, which again will take us in more detail.
Suffice to say that we're very pleased and encouraged by the strong operational and financial results that we delivered under very challenging macro conditions. At the service revenue level, we saw in constant currency terms service revenue up 11.9%, And that is a story basically of two halves where we had 9.4% in the first half and actually 14.4% to deliver the strong 11.9% result. The big driver for our results there was the surge in data and data traffic. We experienced across our operation 110% increase in data traffic during the COVID year of last year. And we saw a very strong performance in data revenue, which was up 31%.
So that was the most material absolute adds to the growth in the financial profile of the business. We managed expenses actually very well. We saw EBITDA rising ahead of service revenue, driving operating leverage. And the lines below EBITDA were very well managed, and we saw our headline adjusted headline earnings up pretty much close to 52%. So a very pleasing result of multiyear now adjusted headline earnings per share growth that are in the double digits.
In terms of our investment program, which started off quite challenged in the first half, many of you will remember that we did reduce our guidance, particularly at the end of quarter one for the year. But as we move through the end of Phase two and into quarter four, we experienced a very strong capitalization in building more resilience and capacity in our network and actually added ZAR12.5 billion of CapEx in the last quarter to end the year with just under ZAR29 billion of CapEx. And this number is pretty much the level of capitalization that we had planned pre COVID. And so thanks from my side to our network and supply chain teams who managed to work through all the challenges with lockdowns to end the year with full capitalization. And that quarter end investment profile has set us up for a very strong start into 2021.
Moving on to the balance sheet, and Sugin will take us in a lot of detail around the balance sheet movement. A few points to call out. HoldCo net debt remained stable at 2.2 times, notwithstanding some of the challenges that we had, particularly around Nigeria upstreaming, I'll talk to. And so when you look at the group overall leverage, that was down from 1.1 times the prior year to 0.8 times, a very pleasing result of ensuring balance sheet resilience during the period. And this again will cover, you'll see that our liquidity profile for the group remained resilient, gives us the ability to be able to withstand shock and also to have financial firepower for us to invest more broadly across the business.
What is also pleasing has been the operating cash flow growth, which was just over 117% to 8,000,000,000 very strong operating results from our markets who have obviously been very focused on driving broader efficiencies. In terms of returns, you will well remember as investors that we introduced return on equity as a medium term guidance. And many of you remember 2018 was more like 11.5%. Very proud of the way we've managed both the balance sheet as well as the P and L to be able to talk today about ROE at 17%. You're well aware of our target, which is greater than 20%, and I think we have the momentum to break through the 20% medium term guidance in the near term.
The final highlight I would call out is obviously the decision that the Board has taken around the 2020 final dividend, where the Board has decided to suspend the dividend in light of some uncertainties that we face, particularly around cash upstreaming, but more importantly as well, our desire to deleverage the HoldCo balance sheet faster. I made the call out in terms of the fact that our HoldCo leverage was 2.2x. We had guided we wanted it below 2x. And part of our decision framework was a desire to see that leverage decelerate much faster. I'll come back in the next chart just to talk in a little bit more detail around the 2020 final dividend decision as well as the outlook for dividends.
So there are three really important messages that I'd like to land today around the dividends. The first is the suspension of the final dividend has a context. And many of you investors will remember that with the H1 twenty twenty results, we did paint out three uncertainties that resulted in us suspending the interim dividend of 2020. There were three factors. The first was that cash upstreaming from Nigeria had been poor, and we hadn't been able to upstream our 2019 final dividend at the time that we released our half year results.
The second was the uncertainty around timings around the ARP, And there are two material ARPs that you guys are fairly aware of, that is IHS and then the further sell down of MTN Nigeria. We have a desire to further localize another 14 odd percent. So the timing of those ARP proceeds had been seen as uncertain given COVID effects that we were experiencing then in 2020. The third was more a general assessment of COVID-nineteen risks. We had just gone into the first wave of or peak of COVID-nineteen.
And so we said that we would make a decision on the final dividend at a maximum of $3.90 cents based on the usual solvency and liquidity assessments and those three specific issues in particular. And as we assessed those conditions, they had not materially improved, and we wanted to focus on deleveraging the HoldCo balance sheet faster. That is the rationale set for the suspension of the 2020 final dividend. We also made another decision, and the Board resolved to suspend the previous dividend policy, which was framed as 500¢ per share of a 2018 base growing between 10% to 20%. And given our concerns around the uncertainties, particularly around Nigeria cash upstreaming and also more broadly assessing COVID uncertainties, the Board decided to suspend the dividend policy.
Very mindful of our capital allocation framework, where we have a very specific batting order on capital allocation, the Board also has resolved to provide clarity for 2021 on the dividend. And there are three important call outs to make as we enter 2021. The first is that the Board anticipates declaring a minimum dividend of $2.60 cents per share, and that would be all things working through from a solvency and liquidity assessment point of view, that will be paid at the end of the financial year of 2021. So that's the first point to make. The second is that we will pay a final dividend and no interim dividend for 2021.
The third point, obviously, mindful that some of these near term uncertainties may actually play out more positively than what we're currently experiencing, the Board has also resolved to communicate to shareholders that it would consider returning any excess cash to shareholders in the financial year of 2021, either through special dividends or through share buybacks, whichever is more value accretive for shareholders. And so we wanted to be super clear to our investors that if the year goes much better than we thought, the $260,000,000 is a minimum and the Board would apply its mind towards a special dividend on top of that ordinary dividend or share buybacks as we close out financial year 2021. We remain guided by our capital allocation framework, which investors on. And these are the capital allocation framework is what has framed the decisions that we've taken, and we think these are the best these decisions are in the best interest of the company with a medium to longer term perspective. Coming back to how the business performed in the year, just a few callouts on our progress versus our current medium term guidance.
A couple of callouts I would like to raise here. Broadly encouraged by the progress we've made during financial year 2020. South Africa had their service revenue at 1.6, but I think there's a very important point in de averaging this 1.6% service revenue growth. South Africa grew in the first half of the year by minus 2.5%. So the second half was actually exceptionally strong where all the engines, including Ocell, fired to deliver an H2 result, which is more like 5.7% growth in service revenue.
So the second half of the year, particularly when we lapped the telecom revenue of prior year 2019, we have seen all four businesses in South Africa in the second half growing positively. And as I said, the second half was a 5.7% service revenue growth, which is in guidance. So we have it as read in terms of a total result. But as we look at the momentum in the second half of the year, which we're seeing in the first two months of this year, South Africa is growing very strongly. And so to Godfrey, Dineo, Giovanni and team, please keep pushing up this very good performance that we've seen in the second half of the year.
The other call out I'd make is really around Holdco leverage, which you see on the chart there, as I mentioned, was 2.2x. Had the Nigeria cash that has not been repatriated, been received by the group, that 2.2x ratio would have been below our guidance at 1.7x. So we had actually very strong upstreaming, particularly from Ghana and the South African business also contributed very strongly. And both markets delivered cash to the group above the budget. And many thanks to our colleagues there who've worked hard to deliver on those financial results.
So again, medium term guidance, we're very pleased and encouraged by the performance. And in the areas that we didn't perform as expectation, we're particularly by the second half performance that's coming out of South Africa. If we look at COVID and how we managed COVID during the year, you'll remember the framing of the ways that we look at the COVID effects. Firstly, the social broader impacts, the commercial impacts, network and supply chain and then funding and liquidity and just focus on how we manage the crisis. At the social end, with our Yellow Hope initiative, we were able to support communities more broadly by zero rating some of our services, SMS in particular.
And the total value of that support to our communities more broadly, we estimate at about billion that we gave back into societies to help them cope with COVID, particularly in the first three quarters of the year. On the commercial side, we did see digital channels pick up in terms of volumes. And as an example, some of you may well remember when we were talking about our Nigeria electronic recharges. At the beginning of last year, they were about 35%. And now at the end of 2020, they were at 45% and continue to increase.
So we are seeing, as part of COVID, customers behaving more differently and actually driving the digital acceleration, which I'll talk to in a short while. On the network and supply chain, the networks remained fully invested. And as I mentioned, a very strong quarter four capitalization, which is giving us some momentum as we start 2021. And we maintained sufficient headroom in our network to pick up on that significant data traffic that we saw across our markets. We maintained a rolling buffer, twelve months buffer of critical spare parts.
So that enabled us to ensure the resilience and capacity within our networks. On funding and liquidity, so Geng will give us more detail. Just two call outs to make. The liquidity profile of the group, very strong, GBP 41,000,000,000 against our internal limits of GBP 20,000,000,000 of liquidity, either cash and committed facilities. So we are well covered there.
And then on the refinancing, much thanks to the treasury team, we were able to finish our refinancing and funding program very early where we did funding of $18,000,000,000 in total. So the business was able to remain resilient and responsive during the first wave and for the full part of last year, and we're very much focused now on how do we take this business forward, understanding the kind of future impacts that we think are more permanent going forward across our markets. If I talk about the year, and as I mentioned, this is really a tale of two halves. I did give you a sense of South Africa in particular about H1, H2. But if you look at the full portfolio, there's some interesting and important dynamics that underpinned the results that we generated.
So you can see there that we had almost two thirds of our subscriber net additions coming through in the second half of the year at 18,000,000 net adds. Nigeria contributing very strongly, notwithstanding the fact that the last two weeks of Nigeria were impacted by the SIM registration suspension. That subscriber net add fed into the recovery we saw with voice. Voice under pressure in particular in the March and into April, Nigeria in particular, but we've seen a strong recovery come through voice. And as many of you know, as much as we're seeing a digital acceleration across our markets, voice is still the majority of the service revenue that MTN generates across its 21 markets.
On data, we see a similar profile, H2 better than H1, and the data revenue also grew strongly. There are some base effects for the H2 comparator. We had a very strong H2 in 2019. Many of you will remember that we pushed very strongly with four gs rollout in Nigeria. So we had a comp period that was actually very strong, but we still experienced very strong data growth.
And then on mobile money, our fintech platforms, notwithstanding the fact that we did zero rate some of our transactions P2P for a period of about three months across most of our markets, that we saw a strong recovery coming through the second half of the year when some of those initiatives were ceased and we started charging for some of those services. So again, a very strong second half. And as I said, we've seen quite a lot of that momentum coming into the early parts of this year. Again, just talking to the regions and picking some of the highlights around South Africa and a couple of points to call out for market context. South African economy obviously contracted under the pressures of COVID-nineteen.
But for our prepaid customers, there was some relief that came through that provided us with resilience in our prepaid business. For those who are close to the SA market, there were these tourist benefits that were given to lower income South Africans. And we think some of that spend and displaced spend for transport as people are staying at home has been quite supportive in how we've seen the resilience in our prepaid business. We also benefited from the award of temporary spectrum to enable us to pick up on what was significant data traffic that came through. And that temporary spectrum is still with us.
And then on the wholesale side, it really is a tale of two stories, which is in part we had Telkom in the base for the first half and it wasn't in the second half. And we've seen actually that the second half, the wholesale actually grew. And actually, as Sougen will mention, South Sea actually grew their revenues by 10% in the year relative to the prior year. So a lot of activity in the South African business. And as I said, we've seen the consumer the two consumer businesses being very resilient.
And we've seen now a sustained momentum of our EBU business continuing to grow double digits. It also benefited from university deals as many of the students were learning from home. And in terms of our investment profile, billion invested in our network and some of that investment obviously going to our IT where we're making quite a lot of investment around our billing platform and preparing for a kind of a multiyear restructuring around our enterprise resource management program there, which we call Boost across the market. So that will be supporting South Africa. So again, solid results delivered by South Africa.
And I would remind you of the H1, H2 dynamic where all businesses in South Africa were growing positively in the second half of the year. In terms of Nigeria, Karl and Ferdi obviously gave capital markets feedback on the Nigeria performance last week, but there were three fundamental macro impacts impacting our business and some of those impacts flowed through particularly to the EBITDA margin outcome that we saw in Nigeria, and Sugin will cover that in some detail. The first, obviously, is the currency depreciation and volatility and lack of sufficient dollars to be able to repatriate the dividend, as I spoke about earlier. There was also an increase in value added tax that came into our OpEx base. And then the final at the end of the year was the SIM suspension, which affected net additions towards the last two months sorry, in last two weeks of the year.
Obviously, the team has been very focused in particular on driving the expansion of the four gs network and increasing population coverage across the markets. And there was an important renegotiation of the IHS agreement to ensure the longer term benefits for the company. We have two portfolios of master lease agreements with IHS in Nigeria, one set that runs to 2024 and another set where most of the towers are that runs to 2029. And we renegotiated this to get better pricing, which will drive better economics over the medium to longer term. And in particular, technology upgrade pricing was brought down and we've got favorable pricing for fiber rollout, which will be critical over the medium term.
So overall, in Nigeria, a very solid set of results but some pressure on margin, which Sugin will talk to. In terms of the other three regions, very broad based delivery right across our markets. You can see there in the chart that service revenue has been very strong. But I think beyond service revenue, what you're not seeing on this chart is what are these markets adding to the margin evolution of the group. Now I'll make a couple of callouts.
SIGA actually increased as a region its EBITDA margin by 400 basis points, Weka by three twenty basis points and MENA by two fifty. So the regions are not only growing the top line but also growing the earnings base of the company, and you see that being reflected in the contribution of the improvement in return from operational execution. And Suneet, we'll talk about that. So very pleasing broad based performance across the business. If we take a look at our asset realization program and portfolio transformation, which we announced two years ago, the headline here is we delivered commendable progress under the existing market condition of ZAR4.3 billion of proceeds to the group, and that's against our medium term guidance of greater than ZAR25 billion.
Importantly, we closed out on Jumia. The ATC transactions were completed last year for just under ZAR9 billion of proceeds to the group, but those proceeds were recognized in the prior year before we set a new target for proceeds. And BICCs closed last month, and actually we received the net proceeds in our bank account already. As we look ahead, there are two material parts of the ARP that are important, and we are looking into 'twenty one a lot more hopeful in terms of their execution given market conditions. The first is IHS, which we fair value at $27,000,000,000 and the second is exploring the sale and leaseback of the SA Towers.
We have a portfolio in South Africa of about 12,700 towers. We've appointed advisers and in the process of readying ourselves for a review of an OpCo friendly sale and leaseback that will also release cash over time. And I'd just like to remind investors, the way we think about the IHS is it's a store of value equivalent to the dollar debt that we have on the balance sheet. And so the execution of IHS over time will be transformative to the financial shape of the business. So we remain very engaged with IHS as a company.
And under current market conditions, we think it's more likely that they will do their IPO in this calendar year. Last year, what impacted them was COVID uncertainty in the first half of the year and the second half was running too close to the U. S. Elections given their desires to list on the New York Stock Exchange. We obviously also focused on the localizations across our markets.
The one that is a very simple one that will carry on is the Rwanda listing by introductions. But we're well prepared and market conditions being conducive for the Nigeria for the listing, all the preparatory work is done. And at the point that it looks like dollar availability becomes available, we are ready to progress with the Nigeria further localization. All proprietary work is done. As we look at our Pan African focus, we did announce last year that we intend to have an orderly exit of The Middle East over the medium term with a Phase one focused on the consolidated subsidiaries and a Phase two on our substantial operation in MTN Iransal.
So with regards to that plan, we still remain focused on and committed to executing the transaction with Telenvest in MTN Syria. You would be well familiar with some of the developments in Syria around the guardianship of the entity. We are remaining robustly engaged with authorities there and are committed to closing out the transaction that we had signed up with Telenvest last year. And so that part of the Middle East exit remains a priority as we look forward in the year. But good progress all the same around our asset realization program in very challenging market conditions.
And finally, before I hand over to Sagin, just to call out on ESG. We've made good progress on ESG in the year, but we believe that there's a lot more that the company needs to do. And we're making ESG at the core a big focus for the company going forward, and we'll talk about that as we explain in some detail the revised strategy for the group. But just a couple of call outs on our pillars that support our ESG framework. Eco responsibility, we have signed up to get to net zero emissions by 2040 and set ourselves some very challenging targets over 2019 base where we're looking to get 47% reduction across Scope one, Scope two and Scope three emissions.
So Charles and the network and supply chain teams are very focused and will be reporting in subsequent periods how much progress we're making at a regular level with regards to our net zero ambition. We have a group wide project called Project Zero where this initiative is being managed. There are also other call outs I'd make around sustainable society. Two big call outs I'd make there. The cost to communicate for societies going forward is going be a big issue.
And in the year, when we look at our average data tariffs, they were down a third. And so that's very pleasing that more people can afford communication services across our markets. Financial inclusion is a key pillar of our strategy right now and going forward, and we did record $152,000,000,000 of transactions across our Momo platform. That's a very staggering number to think about, off a base of 46,000,000 Momo subscribers across the MTN. And so again, we see it both as a commercial opportunity but also as driving financial inclusion.
The other point I'd call out is the progress we're making again on diversity and inclusion, both at the Board level, group Board level and at the exec level, we are moving quite nicely up. There's still a lot of work to be done And we think in due course, we will be crossing the threshold, which is seen internationally as a minimum of 35%, both at board and executive level. And we at MTN remain very committed to that. So those are the points I would highlight on ESG. And as I said, we will report more regularly in more detail going forward.
And with that, let me hand over to Souce again to take us through the financial highlights. Thank you.
Thank you, Ralph. Good afternoon to everybody and joining us virtually, and a special greeting to all the MTNers joining. Over the next twenty five minutes, I will take you through the following: firstly, I will cover the economic landscape that we operated in I will highlight material items that impacted our reported results I will then cover salient features in the group income statement and then an overview of the two main markets, South Africa and Nigeria. I will then return to the income statement for a detailed review of key line items and finally conclude with a review of the CapEx, balance sheet, cash flow statement and returns. Before I go into the actual reported results, would like to first take you through the economic environment that we operated in, in 2020.
Global economic activity slowed down in many countries due to lockdowns as a result of COVID-nineteen. We saw economic activity drop quite sharply in 2020, But as lockdowns eased, we saw an economic recovery in H2. Looking into the chart, you can see that most of the economies regressed in terms of GDP and with inflation rates on a steady rise. Looking into our two biggest markets, the following transpired. In South Africa, we saw the economy contract by 8%, had a sovereign downgrade and rand depreciation while in Nigeria, we saw higher inflations, an increase in VAT, sovereign downgrades, oil price volatility and a devaluation of the naira.
2020 was indeed a challenging year. Our response to the crisis allowed the group to keep abreast of the challenges presented by COVID-nineteen. Looking at the material items impacting our reported results, there are four material items I would like to cover, the first being currency. The weaker average rand against the basket of currencies across our consolidated subsidiaries resulted in reported results being higher than constant currency results. The weaker closing rate for the rand against the U.
S. Dollar impacted the balance sheet items where reduction in debt was offset by ForEx losses. In total, we had ZAR4.5 billion of ForEx losses recorded across our markets. The second material item was significant transactions, of which there were three. The ATC tower companies were classified as held for sale at the 2019 and the transaction closed in 2020.
The group received cash proceeds of ZAR8.8 billion and recorded a net profit of ZAR6.1 billion. On MTN Syria, it was classified as held for sale given the portfolio review done in The Middle East. The net assets attributable to Syria have been written down to its estimated recoverable amount and an impairment loss of $1,100,000,000 was recognized. On the 02/25/2021, subsequent to the end of the year, MTN Syria was placed under judicial guardianship. This event was a significant change that occurred post year end and could not have been anticipated at the end thirty one December twenty twenty.
Therefore, this has been treated as a non adjusting subsequent event. Additional disclosures have been included in Note 9.4.3 of the financial statements. On our 20% investment in BICS, which was classified as an asset held for sale, the transaction closed in Q1 twenty twenty one. At the 2020, we recognized an impairment loss $397,000,000 on remeasurement of this asset. The third material item to note was on a HoldCo leverage and upstreaming.
COVID-nineteen had a significant impact on foreign currency availability, in particular Nigeria, where we had not upstreamed R4.2 billion dollars of dividends. Had we upstreamed the Nigeria dividends to HOCO, our HOCO leverage would have been 1.7 times compared to the reported 2.2 times. Lastly, I would like to cover accounting policy changes and COVID related impacts. The Group implemented a voluntary accounting policy change relating to the release of foreign currency translation reserves and has changed from a step by step method to a direct method. On COVID-nineteen impacts, as our retail customers, enterprises and distribution partners were impacted by the pandemic, we saw an increase of ZAR2.2 billion in provisions for doubtful debts.
Due to the impact of COVID-nineteen, we recorded impairment losses on goodwill of approximately ZAR1 billion. So if we now look at our Group income statement and our reported results or on constant currency, we had solid constant currency service revenue growth of 11.9% in the period driven by double digit growth in Nigeria and Ghana. South Africa increased by 1.6%, impacted by ongoing effects on its wholesale business. In H2, South Africa service revenue was strong, growing at 5.7%. Excluding one off items, you can see that constant currency growth in EBITDA was 13.4% and reported EBITDA increased by 21.9%.
The increase in depreciation, amortization and goodwill impairments was largely driven by increased CapEx additions in the current and prior periods and the goodwill impairments mentioned earlier. As you move down the income statement, you can see an improvement on the JVs and associates line. The increase was driven predominantly by the discontinuation of Jumia as an associate and BICS being accounted for as held for sale. Further down, you see a noticeable change in income tax as a result of improved profit before tax. The group effective tax rate for the period was 32.5%.
This was positively impacted by the non taxable gain on the disposal of the ATC tower companies. Adjusted HEPS, our measure of underlying operational earnings, increased by 51.5% in the period due to improved operational performance. Now moving on to our two major markets, and I'll start with MTN South Africa. Service revenue increased by 1.6%, impacted by the reduction in national roaming revenue in the period as a result of base effects where Telkom was included in 2019. We had unrecognized revenue from Cell C of $414,000,000 at the end of the period.
Excluding wholesale, service revenue increased by 3.2%. We continue accounting for Cell C on a cash basis and have seen a 10% increase in Cell C roaming revenue when compared to 2019. Voice revenue was down 5.6%. This was driven mainly by reductions in the effective tariff, which declined 15% and as there was an increase in the penetration of voice bundles and CVM activities, whilst traffic was up 9.5. Data revenue was at 15.3% was up 15.3%, supported by a 79% increase in traffic and an 11% increase in active data subscribers, which now totals 15,700,000.
The effective rate dropped 32.6%, partially impacted in Q2 by the reductions in data pricing in line with the agreement signed with the Competition Commission. Wholesale revenue declined by 16.4%, driven by the base effects mentioned earlier. I will then go to a bridge view of the key segments of South Africa service revenue. A few comments to make. Encouragingly, the consumer postpaid business was up 2.9% in the year.
This was achieved through strong commercial execution in CVM and prepaid data growth of 11.7%. The consumer postpaid business delivered service revenue growth of 5.3 in a highly competitive market. The growth we experienced in the year was driven by good customer take up of MTN's mega deals. Enterprise service revenue increased by 15.5%, benefiting from interventions aimed at stabilizing churn and adding new corporate subscribers as well as an uptake of work from home solutions. This was further boosted by the sale of data deals customized for universities in order to facilitate online learning, of which some of these were short term and leading to a slowdown in the fourth quarter.
Excluding university deals, enterprise service revenue growth would have been 12%. If I can go back to expenses, margin and CapEx for MTN South Africa, you can see that cost of sales were significantly lower by 7.3% impacted by the reduced device distribution during lockdown as well as lower commissions. Device cost of sales declined by 10.9% as device volumes were lower by 10%. Commission expenses were down 11.5%, driven by lower commissionable postpaid connections as a result of lockdowns as well as implementation of our smart commission model that was positive for commission expenses. OpEx is up by 4.7% due to an increase in network operating expenses, mainly rent and utilities and maintenance.
South Africa also recorded a provision for doubtful debts of 17,000,000 in the period, given expected credit losses increasing as a result of COVID-nineteen. The EBITDA margin improvement improved by 1.7% to 39%, driven by good expense management and lower device cost of sales. The constraints presented by COVID-nineteen to rollout our networks along with the increased focus on efficiencies resulted in a CapEx intensity of 16.6% in MTN South Africa. If I then look at MTN Nigeria, we recorded many of you would have seen the results reported last week, so I will only focus on salient points. We recorded a solid 14.6% growth driven by voice, data and fintech.
In terms of expenses, these were up 22.3, while OpEx increased by 29.2%, impacted by higher costs associated with aggressive four gs rollout and higher site rental costs given the naira depreciation against the dollar during the period. In addition, effective Q2, the reference rate for the conversion to the naira on the IHS tower contract moved from the CBN rate to the NAFEX rate. Nigeria also reviewed the treatment of non recoverable VAT on lease payments to account for it as expenses over the lease period. All these led to a reduction of margins by 2.5 percentage points, driven mainly by the impact of rental costs mentioned above. MTN Nigeria continued to implement expense efficiency initiatives aiming at restoring margins in the near term.
The total CapEx expenditure was $12,700,000,000 for the period and we achieved a CapEx intensity of 21.3. If I then go to group service revenue, voice data and fintech were the key drivers for the period. Voice revenue grew 4.8%. It came under pressure from COVID related lockdowns in the early part of Q2. But as lockdown restrictions were eased in various markets, voice revenue recovered through the remainder of the year.
On data revenue, it grew 31% driven by a surge in traffic of 110%. The active data subscriber base grew by 19,000,000, closing the year at 114,300,000. Digital revenue increased by 27.1% with an acceleration in growth in H2, supported by greater uptakes of our service and base effects on the vast optimization that we concluded last year across our markets. Wholesale revenue declined 12.4% due to the national roaming effects from South Africa. If we then move to FinTech revenue, FinTech revenue grew by 23.9% in the year.
Saw an acceleration in the adoption of mobile financial services as a result of COVID-nineteen. Mobile financial services revenue was up 26.5%. This was driven by an increase in the number of Momo subscribers by 11,700,000 to 46,400,000 users and each generating an ARPU of $1.2 a month. The value of Momo transactions was $152,000,000,000 as we processed 12,400 transactions per minute, which is 35% up versus twenty nineteen. Direct operating costs were well contained within with EBITDA margin improving by five percentage points to 46.8%.
Moving to the Group EBITDA. On this slide, you can see the drivers of Group EBITDA both in absolute terms and margin. Overall Group EBITDA was up 13.4% on a constant currency basis resulting in improved operating leverage. The growth was led by performances of Nigeria, CEGA and Weka regions. At an operational level, EBITDA margin expanded by 0.09 percentage points with positive contributions from all markets, save for MTN Nigeria.
The turnaround in the Weka region during the period was particularly encouraging. We had a strong year from a service revenue perspective with a growth of 8.8% versus 2.9% delivered in 2019. The turnaround is contributing to margin improvement in the group. The group's reported EBITDA margin improved to 45.3% supported by the gain on disposal of the ATC tower companies. Looking at our finance cost and leverage, the increase in net finance cost was a result of an increase in interest expense on lease liabilities.
ForEx losses of ZAR4.5 billion were mainly driven by losses in Sudan and South Sudan of $1,900,000,000 due to the higher rate of settlement of foreign denominated balances. As you can see, the average cost of debt decreased to 7.8% driven by lower interest rates during the period. Moving to leverage, at 0.8 times, the Group leverage improved and benchmarked well against our emerging market peers. As I mentioned earlier, the HOCO leverage remained at 2.2 times with HOCO net debt decreasing by approximately $12,000,000,000 This was aided by the progress made in ARP and improved operational performance. It was also constrained by the cash upstreaming challenges experienced from MTN Nigeria and a weakening of the ZAR versus the U.
S. Dollar. Looking at our headline earnings per share, the table provides a reconciliation of attributable earnings per share through to adjusted headline earnings per share that gives more visibility in operational performance. Looking at the reconciliation between EPS and HEPS, the main adjustments are impairment of the goodwill and held for sale entities as well as a reversal of the gain on the disposal of JVs resulting in HEPS of $7.49 cents. If we adjusted the reported HEPS for the non operational items of which ForEx losses makes up the largest portion being 168¢, we get to an adjusted headline earnings per share of $8.77 cents.
As you can see in the chart, adjusted headline earnings per share increased by 51.5% in the year, showing positive operational earnings momentum and challenging trading conditions, it is pleasing that we have seen two years of growth in HEPS moving from a decline in 2018. On CapEx, we see further improvement in our CapEx intensity in line with our medium term guidance. We closed the year at 16% intensity excluding RoU assets. We remain focused on increasing the resilience and capacity of our networks, although the effects of lockdown restrictions have delayed some site rollout. We capitalized ZAR28.6 billion in the period while rolling out a total of three thousand three hundred and forty two three gs sites and eight thousand three hundred and fifty four four gs sites.
As you can see, Ren and Transmission account for 69% of total CapEx and we continue to invest in the digitization and modernization of our IT systems. Although the focus for CapEx rollout is on three gs and four gs deployment, We are ensuring that in key markets, future RAN and transmission deployments will make our networks five gs ready. MTN South Africa launched its five gs network during the year with 156 sites live. The launch is a culmination of extensive five gs trials and testing and was enabled by the allocation of temporary spectrum from ICOSTA. In South Africa, the multi year modernization of the network progressed and modernization in other markets have commenced ensuring our network are resilient and five gs ready.
Looking at our cash flow and the view from EBITDA to free cash flow, included in non cash adjustments are impairment losses and the remeasurement of disposal groups of 1,500,000,000.0 and impairment of trade receivables of 2,200,000,000.0 with additional provisions of 2,200,000,000.0 being raised across the Group. In the year, we saw 2,900,000,000.0 working capital outflow. This was driven by increased prepayments on CapEx and operating expenses as well as increases in receivables. We had paid $30,000,000,000 for CapEx in the period as we built out our networks and delivered an operating free cash flow growth of 117%. Financing activities of 5,100,000,000 were principally driven by the payment of the capital portion of lease liabilities of $4,900,000,000 Other investments of $3,300,000,000 were driven by the proceeds from the disposal of tower companies of $8,800,000,000 and Jumia of $2,300,000,000 offset by additional investments and restricted cash of $6,400,000,000 and the realization of treasury bonds and bills in Nigeria.
Looking at our HoldCo net debt, looking at the net debt profile, we have seen that a net debt decrease of ZAR12 billion in absolute terms while HoldCo leverage remained constant at 2.2 times due to the challenges in upstreaming and the weakening of the rand to the U. S. Dollar. Group leverage has improved from 1.2 times to 0.8 times due to the improved operational performance. We have made improvements in our debt mix with 52% of our debt being rand denominated as we continue to reduce our exposure to U.
S. Dollar debt and improve the funding mix at a HoldCo level. On liquidity, we had a healthy position, which has improved since 2019. At the end of the year, we had cash of $16,400,000,000 and at an HoldCo level, access to undrawn facilities of $24,600,000,000 Execution of our 2020 refinancing priorities progressed well, and we executed $18,200,000,000 to deal with debt maturing in the next fifteen months ending 03/31/2021. We remain committed to our medium term guidance on HoldCo leverage.
This will be achieved by maintaining growth and operational performance, improved cash upstreaming and delivering on the asset realization program. Looking at our balance sheet, other property, plant and equipment increased to billion as a result of continued investment in our network offset by depreciation. Included in other non current assets is our investment in IHS, which we carry at a fair value of $27,200,000,000 Total Momo deposits are up 80% and at the end of the year amount to R28,000,000,000. The increase in other current assets is due to additional investments in fixed deposits held in Nigeria. Looking further down the table, there is an increase in non current assets held for sale as MTN Syria and BICS has been classified as held for sale at the end of the year.
And on current liabilities, we saw a 13% increase mainly driven by increase in BTS accruals and foreign currency denominated creditors in Nigeria. So let me conclude my presentation by looking at the progress we have made on return on equity. The chart shows a bridge view of the drivers of return on equity excluding hyperinflation. We see that ROE increased from 13% to 17% driven by operational earnings growth from the consolidated subsidiaries with the most significant contributions being Nigeria, SIGA and Weka. As you look at the bridge view on ROE development, the operational results were strong, adding six percentage points to ROE after offsetting for depreciation and amortization, finance cost and tax.
The non operational impact reduced the reported ROE by 2.2 percentage points driven by movements in FCTR and non controlling interest as a result of the weaker rand on reported results. So ladies and gentlemen, in summary, we had a strong operational performance in 2020 in very difficult market conditions. We saw double digit service revenue growth, improved operational leverage while reducing Holdco net debt by R12 billion. In addition, we saw group leverage improve to 0.8 times and growth in ROE of four percentage points to 17%. That concludes my presentation, and I'd like to hand back over to Ralf.
So again, thanks very much for taking us through a very detailed overview of our financial performance. Lots of numbers to get comfortable with there, but as Sagin summarized, an overall very pleasing set of financial results delivered under challenging macro conditions. We thought as part of today's review, we would give you some context around the strategy repositioning of the company. We did spend a good part of the second half of last year and concluded in November a strategy review, which we now internally frame as Ambition 2025. We're very excited about this at MTN, not only in the way that the strategy will drive the socioeconomic progress of Africa, but in the way that we'll be able to crystallize and unlock value that we think is deeply embedded in our core business.
We have a view, which I'm sure many of you will agree with, is that the current share price does not reflect the value that's inherent in the company. And as part of Ambition 2025, we're taking further steps to expose the value as well as accelerate growth across our markets. So I will give you a bit of an insight into the strategy. We are holding a Capital Markets Day in early July. We will spend a whole day going through what I will summarize probably in about ten minutes.
We'll spend a whole day and taking and having our executives take you through all the elements of it. So before I go into that strategy, maybe just a review of where we are today. So we've made a lot of progress over the last four years, as you can see on this chart, and we've picked on a couple of KPIs that demonstrate the solid progress we've made as well as the strong foundation that we now have to take the company going forward. We've grown subscribers very strongly, and we're talking today about two eighty million subscribers, ninety day active subscribers. We started the base in 2017 at 02/17.
We also had a business that was only number one in three of our then 22 markets. We did sell we did exit Cyprus. But today, we stand with 15 of our markets having a leadership position in NPS across various categories of which NPS measurement. And many thanks to our teams across the markets who have taken a lot of efforts to improve the total customer experience as well as the network experience, and that's the progress that we've seen there. We invested heavily to drive much more significant population coverage across our markets.
And today, we cover over 5,000,000,000 people with our radio network. Now this investment as well as improvements in the customer experience are flowing through to the financials that Sugeen mentioned. But we're also showing on the chart the progression that we've seen. So we had high single digit service revenue growth. Today, we're just tipping over into double digits.
We've got a balance sheet that obviously has been challenged by the dollar debt that we took on in just after the 2015 SIM registration fine. And so as many of you know, we've got bonds maturing in 2022, 'twenty four and 'twenty six. But what we've done actively is to try and bring that Holdco net debt position down as well as improve the mix to what Sogen spoke about. And what's been pleasing also is the improving return profile. And we will remain pushing that return profile way above the 20% that we've had as a target.
So we are starting off on a strong foundation as we look to pivot the strategy. Now if we think about the case for change for MTN Group, there are obviously some challenges that we are alive to and we are very realistic about, and that's about the risk profile of the group. And part of reducing that risk profile is our orderly exit of The Middle East. The second is really around the dollar debt that we would like in the nearest of time to be an issue that we're not talking to the capital markets about, and we've actually extinguished that debt. And actually, the company has greater financial flexibility.
But beyond the challenges, there are actually a lot more opportunities, and much of those occasioned by what's come through with COVID, where in twelve months, we did experience a massive acceleration in the demand for digital services and connectivities across our markets. And we believe that there's a small window for operators such as MTN to be able not to participate not only in the connectivity but in the services that sit on top of that connectivity as Africans more broadly start consuming these services and benefiting from what comes through with access to the Internet. We also think that from our perspective, as I mentioned, we do need to reveal and crystallize the value that we see that's inherent in the company. The share price and the valuation that we see does not adequately reflect, and we need to do work as a management team and as a company to reveal that actually to investors. So the case for change that we've discussed with the Board is premised predominantly around those opportunities and those challenges.
And to give you a bit of insight on what those things are, the next three slides will be key. The first thing that we are saying in terms of this strategic pivot is that we do want to build very scale platform businesses on top of a very strong connectivity, pretty much Africa's largest connectivity network. And we call out five platforms that we are investing in at different levels of maturity. So at the one end, the fintech platform is relatively mature against Shinosis, which is our Africa API marketplace, which we launched last year, but we think that, that can grow materially over the next five years. So in fintech, as an example, we believe that we've built a scale business, but we can scale it even more.
We have ambitions to double the size of the fintech platform over the next three to five years. We want to broaden the product proposition, move from payments to lending to insurance to savings and ultimately the intersect of the fintech business and our iOBA business is the opportunity for mobile commerce. So these elements of the strategy you would have heard before in Bright, but we're looking to accelerate these and expose these as distinct businesses, as I'll explain later. On enterprise, we focused in the last couple of years on the connectivity side, building and indexing up on enterprise. As MTN Group, we had a relatively low profile of service revenue contribution coming from our enterprise.
Now with industrial IoT coming into effect, workloads moving to the cloud, we think that there's an opportunity for us to create a significant and scale enterprise business. We've already started pushing in that direction. Jens Kultombokham, our Group COO, is leading our efforts in that and supported by our Head of Enterprise in South Africa, who's now got a dual role as Head of Enterprise and looking at enterprise across the business. And we think going forward, are opportunities to move into unified communications, IoT, as I mentioned, cloud and SD WAN as an example. The other platform that we really believe is important to grow our business and drive a lot of efficiencies is thinking about our network as a service.
Right now, we are offering national roaming in South Africa, South Sea in particular at the moment. But this is a service that we believe can improve the economics of our businesses more broadly across markets. And as some of our markets are constrained in the way that customers can afford communication services, we think that extending our well invested networks to be able to support number three or number four players in certain markets is in and of itself a potential business for us to drive growth as well as efficiency going forward. And the fifth platform, as I mentioned, is Genosys, our African markets API, where we look to aggregate APIs and ultimately be able to monetize them over time. So these are the five platforms that when we start talking about platforms that we see inflicting growth in the company over the next five years.
Now in encapsulating our strategic intents, we've basically built our strategy across four important pillars, which I'll talk to in some detail in terms of what our objectives are. So the first objective is really around building the largest and most valuable platforms. And some of them, we want to structurally separate them and expose them to reveal the value that we believe is inherently built into the company. And I'll come to that in a little while. The second is recognizing that what gives us the ticket of the game is the to continue to have leading connectivity operations, and we see scope to drive greater value through these businesses.
And again, I'll talk a little bit about what our objectives are. Create shared value is a pillar that we've adopted as one of our strategic priorities, and that's about the sustainability of the business and also the role it plays in terms of driving progress across the markets we operate in. And the final pillar is accelerating the portfolio transformation. So let me talk a little bit about what our objectives are. And on this chart, you also see some of our ambitions that we are projecting as we go forward over the next three to five years.
So the first strategic priority is the largest and most valuable platforms. What we're really looking to do there is to pivot from what are currently today products embedded in the GSM business to exposing these more as platforms. You saw us again earlier reporting on fintech. Again, we're going to increase the disclosures around these platforms over time so that you see the underlying economics and the growth profile of these businesses as they scale. So that's the point really about pivoting.
But as we're growing these platforms, we recognize that we don't need to do everything. We don't need to bring all the skills and all the capital to these platforms. We need to create vehicles that allow us to partner others. So we're driving for selective partnerships and to bring other capital into these businesses as part of exposing value. And just to give an example of some of that, as you've seen with the work that we've done with Mastercard in developing a virtual card that allows our Momo subscribers to be able to do e commerce transactions beyond the network of merchants that we have, that's a smart partnership that we are looking for.
Another partnership that we are looking for is in the insurance space. We have 11,000,000 policy of insurance policy And we've got a nascent relationship that we've been working with Sunlam, and we want to look at whether we can expand that more broadly with Sunlam as an insurance partner given our own ambitions for financial services. So that's something that we'll certainly be updating, and I hope that example on the partnership provides you with some context of what we're trying to achieve there. So on industry leading connectivity ambitions that we have and objectives, some very simple targets that we have. We want to double the data customer base, which is just on 100,000,000.
We think that over the next three to five years, with the demand and surge for data services, that can increase up to 200,000,000. We want to own the home. As we've experienced in COVID, some of the work from home, we believe that is going to be permanent or semi permanent. And the home, in terms of just the consumption, either for work or for entertainment, is going to grow. And we want to be the leader in owning the homes across the African market.
We have inherent and embedded in the company, actually the largest fiber network on the African Continent. We have over 85,000 kilometers of fiber today. But we see an opportunity of exposing fiber as a separate asset class or as a separate part of the business where we can also bring in co investors into that business as we roll out our own services for our communication needs and work towards creating a fiber co is well ahead is well progressed there under the stewardship of Jens and Fredrik Skepens, who heads up our global Connect business. So that's another aspect of industry leading connectivity operations. The final key area we want to focus on also around connectivity operations is benefiting from the digital transformation we're seeing today.
And from our perspective, there are two benefits. The first is that we take more of our customer journeys online so that we're able to fulfill through a few clicks a customer journey like purchasing a handset. That is something that we believe will improve the customer experience going forward, and we need to be at the leading edge of that. The second important aspect of the digital transformation that we see is the efficiency gains. The world we lived in pre COVID and the world we are going to in the future is going to be very different, a lot more remote working, a lot less real estate space that we need, And we are targeting to get more expense efficiencies that allow us to drive operating leverage and also to invest in some of these growth options that I spoke about.
And we've set out a target over the medium term that we are looking to extract a further billion of efficiencies off the 2020 base over the next three years specifically. South Africa actually has been at the lead of these expense efficiencies. And to Godfrey and Denis Giovanni and the boarded team, they were OpCo that was responsible for a large majority of the $2,000,000,000 of expense savings that we were able to deliver in last year's calendar year. So that's really around industry leading connectivity operations. Shared value, as I mentioned, is really about sustainability of the markets that we operate in as well as of the company.
And we're making callouts across a couple of areas. We want to make a material step up in our ESG. I spoke earlier on around our Project Zero, but there's a broader set of ESG priorities that we have. We want to complete the localizations and have MTN across the markets seen on a kind of broad based and inclusive basis. You're well aware of the localizations that are at hand, but we've also got broader plans there.
And the final area is really around continued support from the nation state that we operate in, and we'll measure that through the Reputation Index because the more trust we have, we believe that that's an underpin to our success and sustainability. The last pillar of the strategy for us is really around accelerating the portfolio transformation and three key elements of this. The first is executing on the asset realization program and deleveraging the balance sheet. I think a clear message you should take from this presentation is MTN Group wants to deleverage faster at the HoldCo level and give the company a lot more financial flexibility given the growth options that we see. The second is continue with our plans to exit The Middle East in orderly fashion, and that allows us to simplify the business.
And the third objective, as I mentioned upfront, is we want to be able to reveal the value in the infrastructure assets and fintech, in particular, over the medium term. I spoke about fiber. We have a massive data center estate that we think there are opportunities to partners with others as workloads start moving to the cloud, and we're seeing hyperscalers more broadly grow across the market. And there's an opportunity for us to make smart partnerships there and also find co investment in the way that we roll out those businesses. And on the fintech side, as I mentioned, we already have a scale business, but we think this business can become a lot more scale.
And you'll see our aspirations in terms of our enhanced medium term guidance really about the opportunity to ultimately structurally separate our finco business at an opco level and look towards an aggregation of this FinCo business towards a group Fintech business that can sit aside of the GSM business. We are already very scaled in Fintech, but we think there's a tremendous opportunity to grow this business further going forward. So as we think about the business in terms of the investment case, we think that there's a very strong investment case that Ambition twenty twenty five provides here. We see a compelling Africa growth story here, accelerated by the digital shifts that we've seen over the last twelve months, which we think much of it is permanent with us going forward. So the pillars of our investment case is really that we are Africa's leading connectivity business.
There are exciting demographic opportunities that still remain, a young population, a low Internet adoption and penetration. We're very well positioned for the long term given the acceleration we've seen on the continent. And the return profile, we believe we can enhance it from where it is today underpinned by strong risk and regulatory framework as well as a very disciplined capital allocation framework that informs the decisions that we make. And when we think about that capital allocation framework, just to remind, we have five that have a particular batting order. And under Ambition 2025, we are staying very disciplined to that capital allocation framework.
We will invest appropriately into growing our businesses organically and ensuring that our networks are fully invested. We want our networks to be second to none as well as our platforms. So that's priority number one. The second is dealing with the holdco leverage. Returns of cash to shareholders through dividends is third and then selective M and A and then share repurchases, special dividends close off the batting order.
So just to confirm and reconfirm that our capital allocation framework remains intact under the new strategy. And given our excitement about the future and the growth prospects that come with it, we have enhanced and simplified our medium term guidance, and I'll talk to some of the elements. So firstly, at the group service revenue, we're now targeting low to mid teens. As you saw over the last four years, we've been single digits and have just crept up past 10%. So now what we see as good performance is low to mid constant currency single constant currency service revenue growth.
South Africa, notwithstanding the fact that we delivered 1.6%, we are maintaining our guidance mid single digits, which is really the 4% to six As I mentioned, if you look at the H2 performance of South Africa, it's sitting there comfortably at the top end of the range, 5.7% after lapping out some of the base effects of H1, particularly in telecom, and all cylinders firing in H2 on South Africa. Nigeria, want to be a bit more precise with our guidance. Previously, we had double digits. Double digits could mean 25%. But we really want to guide you as investors that the performance we expect from Carl's business is needing to hurdle mid teens and staying above inflation in that market.
The other changes we've made aligned to the view that we see, particularly on fintech, is that we see fintech over the medium term making a material contribution to the group as we accelerate it. And we're making a call out that the fintech platform can deliver greater than 20% service revenue to the group over the next three to five years. Where do we sit today? We're more like 8%. So this is a very ambitious target that we're putting on the shoulders of Serene and the broader team across our business working in smart partnerships.
I think that's an important point that we believe we're going to accelerate the growth by working smartly with other providers who are aligned to our own efforts to driving financial inclusion across our markets. The holdco leverage, again, our desire to bring down that holdco leverage much faster comes clearly that we want to see our holdco leverage inflect below 1.5 times. As Sungen pointed out, had we achieved the Nigeria cash upstream, it would have been 1.7 times. So it has still been above the hurdle that we're now looking forward to. So we really want to focus on a faster deleveraging of the balance sheet to create the financial flexibility to support our own growth ambitions going forward.
And asset realization and ROE have been maintained the same. Now the two prior targets of EBITDA margin expansion, we basically looked at simplifying. We are not taking our eye off EBITDA margin expansion. We're just simply saying that you're going to see it come through the progression in returns on equity because if we are delivering fast growing returns on equity, we must be improving the earnings profile. So that's the reason why we've simplified and taken it out.
It's not because we don't believe margins will continue to grow. And CapEx intensity, obviously, if we are accelerating the service revenue profile and we're keeping a tight but full investment profile on our CapEx, we should see the CapEx intensity continue to come through. And so this is really all about simplification. So as I mentioned, we will provide a lot more color and detail. At the June Capital Markets Day, we'll spend a whole day with you, probably virtually, given that we will still be probably in the midst of COVID.
And I hope that you guys will be able to join us. We feel very excited about the strategy because we think it can inflict the prospects of MTN over the next three to five years. Just looking forward, just a couple of points before we close out and go to Q and A. As we look ahead into just simply this year, I think the macro context is super clear. We've got Sub Saharan markets coming out of contraction into modest growth is what's been projected.
And part of that growth is going to be impacted obviously by COVID-nineteen impacts, whether there are third waves that come through and the ability to dispense with vaccines across markets to really create the herd immunity that gets us back into a much more normal cycle. Currencies and commodities obviously are super important in how they impact the economies and how we translate cash back to the group. But the one thing that we really do think will power through in 2021 is that mobile and digital acceleration will remain. We think that this is going to be fairly sustained because we have a huge population base that is still not connected to the Internet and there's still scope to drive our services more broadly, not just connectivity but the services that sit on top of the connectivity. But we remain cautiously optimistic as we're looking ahead and the caution is really around the COVID-nineteen impacts and how the countries come out.
Our business is ready and well invested to be able to capture the growth. And at the half year results, I think we will be providing you with the context of some of the priorities that we need to be executing on to deliver on an Ambition 2025. So these six are what I'll be super focused on with the broader team. So South Africa and Nigeria, we think that these businesses can maintain an accelerating growth profile. So South Africa has done well, particularly in the second half.
But the other call out, as Sugan mentioned, is the margin expansion. When Godfrey runs his business and we're discussing what we expect from him, he understands that we want the EBITDA margins between 3942%. That's what we're trying to drive the South African business. And with Nigeria, we are not where we need to be on EBITDA margins. And Karl is very clear of what good looks like in terms of EBITDA margins.
And the profile we need is to be moving towards the 53% to 55 EBITDA margins on the current basis. Now we won't get there all in one year, but that is the growth trajectory that you'll start seeing to move into that corridor of EBITDA margin expansion. We're going to work very hard to do the work around the infrastructure assets and fintech, and we'll report on progress there at the half year, what have we done on the infrastructure side and how is are we inflicting the fintech businesses, what partnerships have we formed and what progress have we made in terms of the structural separations at the OpCo level, which ultimately we would look to see come through at the group level. The other important part is ARP. Market conditions actually for the IPO process are much better this year than in prior year.
Last year, IHS was confined by two factors. The first was COVID effects in the first half of the year and the second half of the year is the work that they had done got caught up into the U. S. Elections. And obviously, IPO ing our business around elections could have had negative impacts.
So we feel relatively confident that the IHS transaction should happen in the calendar year. U. S. Equity markets are very buoyant and resilient. And we'll focus on the cash upstreaming, Nigeria in particular, and executing on the portfolio transformation, and we'll report back on how much progress we've made.
The second to none networks, it's encapsulated by the amount of investment that we plan to make. So we are investing slightly higher than we did last year, billion, to ensure that our networks have capacity and resilience and maintain our leadership position. There are a couple of complex litigations we're working through that you guys are all familiar with. That's a priority, and we will update on progress. And the final area is really around this point about putting ESG at the core, and will provide progress that we've made around Project Zero and other of our initiatives that form the substance of our ESG framework.
So in conclusion, I just wanted to point out five key items that I think encapsulates how we've seen the results, and hopefully, you've seen them the same way. The first is very strong operational and financial results delivered in a challenging macro. All our main financial KPIs have progressed very strongly. The only one that remains challenged was really around HOTCO leverage, and that's why we took our decisions around the dividends. The second is that the business resilience.
The business has been very resilient under COVID-nineteen. Networks are capable of taking the traffic, and we have enough headroom. And we've been able to make a full investment program pretty much across our markets, notwithstanding the lockdown arrangements. In the near term, very focused on faster deleveraging of the holdco. I've probably said that six times today, but I think you understand our conviction of creating greater financial flexibility.
My simple rationale to investors is the way we fair value the IHS is, once we've been able to complete that transaction, is equivalent to the dollar debt that's sitting on the balance sheet. So that transaction will be very transformative for the company going forward in its own financial profile. And that's why we put such an excellent focus on deleveraging the HoldCo balance sheet. Ambition 2025, we've announced it's actually in execution. And as I said, we will be able in June to actually show you the progress that we've made in a very short space of time.
We think that there are opportunities there for value unlock. Some of these businesses are separately carved out and sitting with their own specific group of investors will have a different valuation multiple to being embedded in a core GSM business, and we will work hard to reflect that. We remain very excited about the future, and that's why we've enhanced the medium term guidance that we see more growth, and therefore, we are committing that growth to our shareholders. And the final point is that notwithstanding all the challenges in our markets, there are many challenges, particularly in the near term, around dealing with COVID. There is an acceleration for the demand of digital services that we think is not going to abate, whether it is in doing financial services more digitally, the consumption of digital services.
And we see this as the force that is underpinning MTN over the next three to five years, and that's why we remain very excited. So that's the end of the presentation, and thank you very much for bearing with listening to myself once again over the last hour plus. We had a lot to say, and we felt that this is our only opportunity to say it with the immediate release of the results and we are very happy to take any Q and A that you have. I have Gottfried Motza, our CEO of MTNSA. So if you guys want to ask questions about SS spectrum, I am just going to direct them all to Gottfried.
So Tatop, please pass on the questions as they come through.
Sure. Thank you very much, Ralf and Sigyn, for a fairly comprehensive presentation. It did cover a lot of the questions that came in, and I'll ask them in banks of three. It is across a number of incoming questions, so I'll have to skip the names for this sort of exercise. The first one really is just around the ARP guidance ZAR25 billion.
If you look at assets like IHS, SA Towers, Nigeria localizations, these are fairly big in terms of value in context of the ZAR25 billion. Is your guidance not too conservative? Can you reconcile this? No, that's a
fair question. And when we did the guidance last year, we said that GBP 25,000,000,000 was against an asset base fairly valued of GBP 40,000,000,000. So we said there was some coverage for execution risk in that. So I mean on the $25,000,000,000 for sure, is and that's why we say greater than 25,000,000,000 I think the important point there, we not say 25,000,000,000 we say greater than 25 And obviously, the material transactions there, IHS, as I said, we're looking to do a sale and leaseback of a significant proportion of our towers. You can do the math on what the fair valuation of that is.
We're in process evaluating that, so we can't express to you what our view is of that. So if you kind of work with us here, we'll be slightly vague on this particular point on Essay towers because we have a process underway, and there'll be a bidding that will go through it. So for sure, it is a conservative positioning against the fair valuation of all the assets that we see being able to be executed. But I think if we look at the near term, I would prioritize IHS and the SA sale and leaseback as events to watch out for in 2021.
Thanks, Rolf. You've headed off some of the other questions around SA towers. But I think just in terms of structural separation of towers, fiber and data centers, how do you see this in terms of needing a first mover advantage in terms of infracos and just some time lines around that?
No. Look, I mean, for us, it's important, and we are focusing in the interim where we've done a bit of work really around the Fibreco and on fintech. And I think on fiber, we realize that there is a significant data demand that is not going to stop, and the fiberization of the African continent is going to be with us for some time. You would have seen in the slides earlier we believe there's a minimum investment from MTN that's going be required over the next three to five years of $05,000,000,000 and we say it's a minimum. But in the way that we deploy that fiber to service our own needs, it creates an opportunity for us to really build an open access model towards fiber provisioning across the markets.
So we think that as we are moving in this direction of more fiber investment, nothing stops us from bringing other third party investors into a vehicle that enables us to roll out much more faster. And in due course, this may be a business that is separately structured and has its own group of investors, of which obviously MTN will remain a big part of. So that work is actually underway, and the team is, as I said, under Jens' guidance, working with Frederic Skeppens. The other one is fintech. As I said, we think that it's important for reasons of being able to expose value.
But I'd also argue that where we are today, when businesses become this big, they'll need to be regulated very separately from the core GSM business, and we're seeing some of that play out. Some of you would have seen the pronouncements in Kenya around a review of separating fintech business from GSM. So we had applied our minds already towards this. And obviously, it starts at an OpCo level, and we would look towards and it's not a trivial matter, but we'll look towards creating something at a group level. So that's something that we see that we can work on particularly over the next three years.
It's not a thing that will happen tomorrow, and that's why we say Ambition twenty twenty five. But in the next three years, we certainly see a transformation and an ability to carve out fintech very separately from the GSM. These two businesses, and I've got some experience on financial services, they are very different. And I think over time, they have a very different capital profile, different return profile, different regulatory. But we're excited about the opportunity to actually reveal that value.
We'll just stick with South Africa, and you were quite right. Question on South African spectrum. What are your thoughts on the interdict to delay the spectrum auction? And how does that impact on your plans and the case that you have with IKAS and the courts?
Yes. As I get the camera to focus on Godfrey because I anticipated this question, I would headline that before I give Godfrey the chance to talk. But I would headline that by saying we are very committed to a couple of things. One, we are committed to the release of this high demand spectrum as soon as possible. And Godfrey will explain our narrow challenge as part of the litigation process.
The second is that we are very committed to find a mediation to resolving this very quickly. We think that there is a national agenda out around making broadband accessible to South Africans, and we don't want that to be rolled back. Godfrey has already got five gs sites, so he wants more five gs sites. Let me talk to the Boza man to actually give us his own views.
Thanks a lot, Ketan. On the issue of the spectrum, I think the first point is we can't be commenting a lot on the on the telecom situation. The most important thing for us is that the urgency to release the spectrum is now. So that's what we're really pushing and working with ICASA. And of course, our issue with IKASA is still not addressed.
It is very narrow, and we are very clear we do not want to block or delay the overall award of the spectrum. We believe IKASA can address the issues of opt in and tiering as quickly as possible without delaying this. What is also important is that IKASA cannot take away the temporary spectrum that we have at the moment because that is what is giving oxygen to the industry. The reason why we are able to carry some extra double traffic on a year on year basis, we are able to zero rates for millions of customers so they can pay they see land from home. They can get some public services at from from home.
Those things have to continue busy happening. So I think our plea to Iqasa is still the same: the temporary spectrum cannot be withdrawn. And secondly, let's quickly resolve the issues so we can substantively award the spectrum and digitize the country.
Thanks, Gottri. Thanks,
Godfrey. Then maybe just switching to Nigeria. Do you have an update on cash upstreaming year to date and what the situation is in terms of U. S. Dollar availability, particularly in the context of higher oil prices?
Prices?
Yes. And the cash upstreaming to date is as at the end of the year. So we got under approximately $80,000,000 in quarter four last year, and we haven't had further cash upstreaming from Nigeria. We feel cautiously optimistic where we sit right now. The first is we've seen OMO rates go up, and OMO rates generally attract foreign portfolio flows, which help to build the reserves.
And actually, over the weekend, there's been an interesting intervention by the CBN to provide a bit of a carrot for Nigerians to bring back dollars into the country, and I think many of you would have seen that. So as we assess the situation around some of those measures as well as a bit more buoyancy around oil, we're encouraged, but we balance our encouragement with caution as well. And until we've seen the funds flow, I mean, I think we'll remain with some level of caution. Now for sure, Karl, Madhupe and Ishmael are some of our key executives in Nigeria are very focused on continuous engagement with the authorities there. So I wouldn't want to be providing an answer that says we're very bullish, but we are cautiously optimistic that that process will come through.
Of course, the question is around the dividend. What other metrics will the Board look at in terms of guiding the potential dividend policy, the dividend during the year? And what sort of thinking are you having in terms of the potential policy in a year's time?
Yes. So that's a question I expected given the dividend statements we've made. So in our consideration for 2021 guidance, we said, what do we believe under stress scenarios we can commit to our shareholders under any stress scenario? And we basically worked out it's approximately ZAR 2.6. And what informs that is that we see no repatriation risks actually coming out of the South African business.
So I think you need to see the $2.60 in the context of saying that we see an MTN SA equity free cash flow that's at least $260,000,000 So that's why we're putting the underpin of the minimum dividend of $260,000,000 Now as I said, we are cautiously optimistic as a company. We're excited about the growth prospects, but when we look at the balance sheet, we look at it very cautiously. Now if our caution is too conservative and actually we get the IHS away, the tower deal is done, our HoldCo leverage would be below materially below 1.5x. So we would have met that part of our capital allocation framework, which is the second part. Now we'll have excess cash.
And when we have excess cash, we are being very disciplined across our return profile that we have a responsibility to give some of those returns back to shareholders, either as a special dividend or as a share buyback. So what the Board will assess is the execution pace, particularly of the ARP, is what will influence our decision to look to more than the minimum ordinary dividend. So those will be some of the conditions. And obviously, if the Nigerian cash now gets upstreamed, then we're in a position of a relative embarrassment of riches. And that's why we have been very clear in our communication that we will be very disciplined in financial twenty twenty one that if there is excess cash, we will return it to shareholders.
We've debated that thoroughly with the Board. And I did ask the Board as we thought through it that we do need to communicate very clearly with shareholders because shareholders will hold it to account. So I'm very confident I can make that statement that if the year is very strong, there's this very serious consideration of a special dividend or share buyback in calendar year FY 2021.
And then just linked to that, how do you reconcile that with the impact on MTN's Zakela Foote given their dependence on
the group dividend? No. We'll engage with Zakela Foote separately from that decision. We keep these decision sets separate. We want to deleverage faster.
So we will engage with Zakela Foote. And if they need some interim support, we've done with them before, we will provide that for sure. Last time, they asked us for 13,000,000 of working capital facility, which we provided them. And when they write to us, we will apply our mines and we'll support them. They are an important part of our BE profile, which is super important for Godfrey's business.
A question on Nigeria and the PSB license. Should a PSB license not be secured in the next two years, does this change your mobile money strategy in Nigeria?
Look, I mean, we remain very engaged and we remain very focused on being able to activate the fintech opportunity in Nigeria. And today, we are more open to not just the PSB license but a license regime that enables us. I think over the last two years, we're very focused on the PSB, but we're a lot more open to partnerships if the PSB license does not come through. We think the fintech opportunity in Nigeria is very, very significant just given the demographics in that market. But obviously, this is a key priority for Karl Toriola and exposing some of Karl's KPIs for 2021.
And I'm sure Karl is listening. This is a material KPI for him to resolve the PSP license or other banking license or structure that enables us to leverage the distribution footprint we've already built in Nigeria to roll out financial services. We remain relatively optimistic that it will come in the near term.
I think maybe a final question and then you can round it off with some closing remarks. You need to
ask again some questions. He's standing right up here.
And these are all kind of broad strategic questions. I think we've made some important announcements in that regard. So this refers to the fintech opportunity and particularly in South Africa. What are the opportunities that you see to scale this up and some of the plans that you have around that?
Yes. Gauthry, if he was to speak, will say he's lived two experiences of fintech not inflecting in South Africa. And as we've said before, with the benefit of hindsight, what those fintech opportunities we're trying to do is to compete with the banking propositions. The way we've positioned fintech in South Africa is basically better than cash. So that allows us to grow to communities that are still predominantly cash based, spas operators, the more informal economy where actually a lot of cash sits under the mattress, so to speak.
That's where Godfrey and Felix and the team have been pushing, and we've seen good growth in a very short space of time. So as we expand that service, we also want to deepen the product range. As I mentioned earlier on, we've got a very nascent relationship with Sun Lump. We want to deepen that more broadly in South Africa and beyond the borders. But South Africa remains an opportunity where we think there can be a substantial fintech business in the portfolio.
But for sure, that opportunity is not as big as in markets like Nigeria or some of the other markets like Ghana, but it's material enough for Godfrey to put resource and Felix and the broader team to try and pursue that.
Thank you, Ralf. I think we need to wrap up the presentation. Any closing remarks from your side?
No. Thanks to all the investors and MTNers who are watching what was a relatively longer results presentation because we put on a little bit of an insight in terms of how we're looking at strategy. We just want to thank you for spending the time with us. Hope you prefer the 3PM positioning. And again, for many of the investors, will talk to you over the next couple of days on our roadshow.
Thanks very much. Much appreciated.