Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Airtel Africa plc H1 results. All participants are currently in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. Participants on the webcast may submit their questions in the text box at the bottom of the page. If you should need assistance with the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero. Please note that that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to the CEO, Mr. Segun Ogunsanya. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's presentation and conference call. This is my first set of results as Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Africa, and the very first time I am meeting with many of you. Although virtually, let me say what an honor and a privilege it is for me to take up this position, and I look forward to engaging with you all over the months and coming years. I'm here today with Jaideep Paul, our CFO, and Pier, our Deputy CFO and Head of Investor Relations. I'm gonna take you through the first part of our presentation, covering the overall business strategy and our headline performance. Jaideep will then take you through the results in more detail, after which I'll be happy to open the floor for questions. If we turn to slide 3.
I thought it might be very helpful to highlight my initial observations of the group and my first thoughts on our focus for the next few years. In terms of key observations, what do I see? For a number of years now, the business has been focused on the expansion and strengthening of both our physical network infrastructure and our distribution capabilities. These have been the key enablers of our growth. This strategy has proven to be quite successful, yielding increasingly strong set of results. This one combined with a very strong corporate culture across the group with universal backing for our purpose, our purpose of transforming lives. This has driven a very strong can-do attitude among all of our employees. Looking at the markets where we operate.
The population and industry dynamics of our markets continue to provide us with a tremendous opportunity with some of the strongest population growth rates in the world and the most youthful populations, with many young people continuing to be key drivers of digitization. Most of these young people, they are digital first, digital only. They consume data only on mobile devices. Historically, our markets have very low rates of customer penetration of both mobile voice and mobile data services compared with more developed markets. The same goes for banking account penetration, which is very low in our adult population. We continue to use our mobile money offerings to bridge the gap, the financial gap in our various communities. Our strategy is working. The figures testify. Given my past involvement in the business, you should not expect any major shift in strategy.
Both the strategy will naturally evolve over time as we look to build upon our strong market positions. Although one area I'm very passionate about driving harder is our digitization programs. I'll be working with my colleagues with the aim of identifying and maximizing the opportunities with our customers from expanding our digital content and service capabilities. I look forward to discussing more about this with you in future results announcement. Let me now go back to our financial and operational goals. Our focus will continue to be on driving revenue growth, expansion of our profit margins, increasing mobile money penetration, and further strengthening our balance sheet. We're going to do this with sustainability at the heart of our agenda. Today I'm very pleased. I'm also excited to announce that we have launched a detailed sustainability strategy with a separate announcement made to the market early this morning.
I will talk a bit more on this on the coming slides. If you turn to slide number four. I will take you through a few of the highlights, the key headlines of our first half results. First, let me reemphasize our corporate purpose. It's about transforming lives, which we achieve through providing affordable mobile communication services and mobile money services. The keyword is affordable, given the levels of affordability in our various communities in Africa. As we do this, we are bridging the digital divide and by banking the unbanked as well. We're bringing very strong digital capability to the population through both the expansion of our network and by rolling out our distribution capabilities, and then by making our digital content and services both affordable and easily accessible for the people of Africa. This key purpose lies at the core of our sustainability credentials.
I have a specific slide on our sustainability strategy later in the presentation. Financially, we've had a very strong half. This should be viewed in context because while our business has generally experienced only minimal impacts from COVID, the effects were felt most acutely in the earliest phase of the pandemic, the first quarter of last year, when governments and populations were first reacting and adapting to the virus. This led to a weakened performance in our Q1 first quarter of last year. Correspondingly, this has been reflected in stronger year-on-year growth metrics for both our first quarter in the current financial year and first half performance this year, with much less of an effect on our second quarter year-on-year growth metrics.
In constant currency terms, group revenue and underlying EBITDA for the half year grew by 27.6 percentage points and 38.5% year-on-year respectively, and our EPS has more than doubled to $0.075. I'll take you through some more high-level financial performance metrics in a moment before Jaideep, our CFO, takes us through the details. My confidence and our confidence in the sustainability of this financial strength, combined with our successful deleverage in these last few years, has led the board to determine that the time is right to upgrade our dividend policy. Today, we have announced that we are targeting a new base of $0.05 for the dividend for this fiscal year 2022.
This is an increase of 25% on the $0.04 dividend for last financial year, and we're giving guidance for annual growth of a mid- to high-single-digit percentage. The board has also declared an interim dividend of $0.02 per share in line with this upgraded dividend policy. Operationally, our strong revenue and EBITDA growth rates have been driven by both customer growth and ARPU growth across all of our regions, the three regions and all of our key services, voice, data, and mobile money. Our total customer base now stands at over 122 million-122.7 million people, with growth in the base strengthening to 5.4 percentage points. We are seeing steady improvements in the customer trend in Nigeria with the resumption of new customer acquisitions in the country since the month of April.
You'll recall that in Q2, the net customer churn was only 550,000, down from 1 million in quarter one and 2.5 million in the final quarter of last year when we took the main brunt of the changes in the way we registered customers. ARPU, a key metric in our industry, average revenue per user, has grown 18.5% to $3.1, with data ARPU, a key component of the growth, up a similar 19%. mobile money continues to be a key driver of our growth, with transaction values rising 47% to $30 billion for the half year. Our final operational highlight regards our cash upstreaming capability. We have plenty of scope for upstreaming with some resilience built in from having a diversified business across 14 different countries in Africa.
Over the last 18 months, we have upstreamed $570 million to HQ from the various subgroups. In terms of our key strategic highlights, we've concluded the addition of another minority investor in our mobile money business, Qatar Investment Authority, bringing a further $200 million investment to the $300 million already committed by TPG's Rise Fund and Mastercard. With the first closing of all these deals, we have received $375 million from all of the investment. We also announced the sale of our 1,400 towers in Tanzania for $175 million. With this, in Tanzania, we expect $175 million.
Recently in October, we announced that our largest business, Airtel Nigeria, has launched an open buyback offer to all the shareholders, providing an opportunity for minority shareholders there to sell. Finally, on this slide. On the leverage, the money we received, the cash we received from mobile money investments, coupled with our growing operating cash generation, has helped us to bring down our leverage position to only 1.5 x. Recollect when we launched the IPO about two years ago, it was 3x. Now we're down to 1.5x. We aim to bring this down further. Now, if you turn to slide six, I'm gonna give you more information on our financial performance. Overall, the headline revenue has grown by 27.6% in constant currency terms in this first half of our financial year.
With a second quarter growth rate of 22.7%, that is perhaps more representative of the underlying trend before COVID effects. By all standards, this is a very strong revenue growth rate for a FTSE 250 company. With our tight control of costs and the natural operating gearing of the business, our underlying margin, EBITDA margin, has improved by 381 basis points to 14.3%. Our earnings per share more than doubled from $0.03 Last year to 7.5 cents per share. Operating cash flow has grown over 43% to almost $900 million at $857 million. The next slide is our scorecard. If you recollect when we went to the market 2, 3 years ago, we shared some objectives with you.
At every period, every point in time, we have a checklist. We compare how we are faring against those objectives. Basically around mobile revenue and mobile money revenue, on EBITDA, CapEx, leverage and dividend. You can see the green tick point against each of those objectives. We have delivered against the objectives. In many cases, we over-delivered on the objectives. Today, we have also announced an upgrade to our progressive dividend policy. This is on the back of continuous strong business performance and significant progress we have made in reducing the leverage ratio. Our new dividend policy aims to grow the dividend annually by a mid- to high-single-digit percentage, starting from a new base of $0.05 per share for this financial year, with a continued focus on further strengthening of our balance sheet.
In line with this new policy, the board has declared an interim dividend of $0.02 per share, which is up by a third on the $0.015 interim dividend last year. Can I go to the next slide? I mentioned about our growth strategy, that there is no radical change in the strategy. I was part of it, and I'm still part of it. It is fundamentally unchanged. It has contributed to delivering very strong double-digit revenue growth across all regions and services. The six elements remain our network expansion, our distribution expansion, our focus on data, increasing penetration of mobile money, focus on optimizing costs, and having a very deep bench of talented people. Those six pillars continue to drive the growth of our business.
You may have noticed that we have renamed one of the pillars from win with customers, which you would have seen in earlier presentations, to win with distribution. There's no fundamental difference in content of the pillar. This reflects how we roll out our retail and support infrastructure in alignment with our network rollout to ensure that we are conveniently accessible to new customers and also to support existing customers. If you go to slide 10. It shows the results across our three regions, Nigeria, East Africa, and Francophone Africa. Nigeria continues to be our largest and fastest growing market in constant currency terms. With revenue growth of 32.5%, both East Africa and Francophone are not very far behind. They're actually not far behind. East Africa grew at 25.8% and Francophone Africa at 22.1%.
This is a particularly strong turnaround for Francophone Africa, which several quarters back was recording negative growth. It is now finally benefiting from our 4G and the distribution investments we've made in the last couple of years. All of the regions have also delivered very, very strong EBITDA growth. Nigeria's EBITDA is almost 55%, East Africa 48%, and Francophone Africa 40.5%. All of our three regions have EBITDA north of 40%. From a customer perspective, we've strengthened our customer numbers. Some impact came from Nigeria, where a number of regulatory headwinds stood us down in the first quarter of the financial year.
I'm happy to confirm that those headwinds have been overcome as we continue to work with the regulators in Nigeria to evolve a win-win approach to the concerns of regulatory and security and our focus on driving a sustainable business. If you go to slide number 11, it's a summary of the three key services that we provide voice, data, and mobile money. Given the experience of most developed markets, there's been some historical concern around our potential to sustain voice revenue growth. We believe the combination of market potential for both continued customer growth and usage growth should yield a significant opportunity for the group for many years to come. We've continued to grow voice. We've done about almost 20% in the half year results we're looking at. We believe that double-digit growth revenue is sustainable in voice.
Meanwhile, data and mobile money continue to act as major growth engines, with revenue growing at almost 37% for data, excuse me, and 14% for mobile money. These very strong growth rates mean that those services, data and mobile money, now account for half of our service revenues. Voice 50%, data and mobile money together account for another 50% of our service revenues. Let me now go to specific product line, and I'm gonna start with voice. On slide number 12, this slide represents the formula for growth, how we've combined increase in customer number and usage to drive revenue growth on our voice vertical. Thanks to our continued focus on expansion of our network, particularly in underserved rural areas, and also we've continued to improve our network and service availability to customers through a combination of deeper distribution and simple pricing.
We call it more for more, offering our customers bundles that reflect the more you pay, the more benefits you derive. We've grown our customer base from this simple principle and their usage levels. The unique customer penetration across our footprint is still very, very low. A lot of our customers have just SIMs. So the unique penetration is still very low compared with most parts of the world. This is a pointer to the potential we still have around continued growth in voice revenue. If you move to the next slide number 13, it speaks to data revenue. We've broken this down again into how increase in customer number and increase in usage has led to huge increase in our data revenue, almost 37%.
The potential for data growth is even higher than for voice, as the penetration of both smartphones and 4G capable handsets remain among the lowest in the world in Africa. Furthermore, our markets, various markets in the 14 countries, we have very poor home broadband connectivity with limited fixed line availability. Many customers rely on mobile networks for their data connectivity needs. Hence, our customer base has grown by almost 11% to about 14.4 million customers, representing about 36% of our customer base. We've spoken about our network design in earlier presentations. We use the SingleRAN technology. Combined with this, we've increased our fiber rollout, and this has created a significant data capacity with in-built flexibility to further expand at limited marginal investment. We have continued to invest in 4G ahead of our peers.
As I speak now, across our 14 countries, about 82% of our sites are 4G capable. This makes sense. If you look at the ARPU of our 4G customers, it's about $5.2. This much more than the ARPU we derive from 2G and 3G customers. With our continued 4G investment, combined with the value we afford customers on our simple, more formal bundles, we continue to grow our customer base. Now on mobile money. Slide number 14. This is to just let me share with you the opportunities we have for mobile money, specifically in our markets and also in Africa if you like this then. If you look at the top left-hand corner, we've given two penetration figures. The figures at the bottom, they represent the penetration figures if you exclude Nigeria.
We don't have mobile money business in Nigeria, so the penetration figure is about 19%, moving from 17% last year. We've broken the markets into three different categories. Highly penetrated market is mainly in East Africa, moderately penetrated markets, a mix of Franc and East Africa, and lowly penetrated markets. Figures range from 16% penetration in the lowly penetrated markets to 65% in the highly penetrated markets. Plenty of scope in all the three markets to grow the penetration of mobile money further. The lack of traditional banking infrastructure in our markets and the very long distances that people travel to find bank branches mean that the number of customers who are able to access traditional banking services is far lower than even the numbers who have bank accounts.
Aside from the distance, the cost of banking services are also so high in the region and therefore customers and businesses rely heavily on cash in these economies. This is where we come in. With mobile money, we bridge in the gap between the unbanked, mainly in rural areas, and also creating digital cash for use in mainstream and urban economies. While many African markets are ahead of other countries in the world in terms of the use of mobile money, our portfolio of markets includes a mix of penetration levels, which is what I described earlier. As you can see, one thing that clearly marks out our mobile money operations from those of some competitors is how diversified our business is, and this creates unique opportunities for us to continue to increase penetration across our footprint.
We've been able to increase mobile money penetration in nearly all of our markets, although we have some challenges in Rwanda. We are familiar with the challenges. We are addressing them. In DRC as well, we've cleaned the customer base, which has grown in absolute numbers, but not just as quickly as our total customer base has grown. If you look at the chart above again, in 4 countries, we now have a penetration rate of over 50%, and there are several more where we believe we can significantly grow the penetration levels. Once again, this excludes Nigeria. If you exclude Nigeria, our penetration is 29% as we continue to wait for approval to commence mobile money business in Nigeria, our largest market. If you go to the next slide number 15. Slide number 15, please.
It shows that half of our mobile money revenue is still coming from cash in, cash out. This is also a reflection of the opportunities available on our mobile money business, if currently 50% of all the revenues are coming from only one service offering, cash in, cash out. Because the main use of mobile money continues to be for security and access to cash, with most of our customers using our agents and kiosks to both deposit and withdraw their cash to and from digital mobile wallets. Beyond cash in, cash out, the next most popular service for our customers is mobile recharges, reflecting a charge between our mobile money and our mobile services businesses for customers recharging their voice and data bundles using their mobile wallets.
The next is from payments when customers use mobile money to pay merchants and other bills. Although we see cash in and cash out as the major source of our mobile money revenue, there's tremendous growth potential in other areas as well. This is why we continue to expand our mobile money ecosystem. I'm excited by the recent addition of a leading African payments company, Flutterwave, to our growing list of key partners. We already have Mastercard, Western Union, Ecobank, WorldRemit, Standard Chartered Bank. Now we've added Flutterwave to this list. With this, we're able to empower our customers to make mobile payments in East Africa using Flutterwave and our mobile money platform. If you go to the next slide number 16. mobile money remains our fastest growing business. Off a very small base, but still the fastest growing business for us.
42% in this first half versus the first half of last year. As previously mentioned, the key to mobile money remains the provision of our services in an assured manner. This is building trust. We want our customers to know that when they walk into any of our mobile money outlet, they're able to receive cash or they're able to pay cash to their wallet. It is assurance that separate us from other operators in the mobile money business. Our continued growth, this very strong growth, is coming largely from our unique franchise-led mobile money service points that supplements the fast-growing agent network, which has now reached over 500,000. Our own Airtel Money branches have almost doubled to 14,000 and kiosks and mini shops over 43,000.
This improvement in distribution and 90% growth in customers have together driven an increase of 47% in transaction values to over $30 billion. In turn, our mobile money revenue has grown by over 40% year-on-year in both reported and constant currency terms. I'm moving to the next slide on our strategic initiatives. I've broken this into two buckets. The first bucket is on opportunities we've already executed and the future opportunities we're working on. First on the executed opportunities. We continue to sell towers where we still own the towers. In Tanzania, we've added the sale of 1,400 towers to the earlier announcement we made in March for the sale of 1,429 towers in Malawi and Madagascar. Although this is still in progress, we expect completion before the end of the financial year.
We also continue to explore the opportunity to sell over 1,000 towers in Chad and Gabon. We've signed an exclusive MoU with Iliad Towers on this. With this, we'll complete our tower monetization program. Back to mobile money on managing investments. We've added the $200 million investment from QIA, Qatar Investment Authority, to the earlier deals. Recall that again, we've received money from The Rise Fund and from Mastercard. This has brought total investments in our mobile money business to $500 million. So far, we have received $375 million after the first close. In terms of future opportunities, we continue to see strategic opportunities in fiber and data centers. I would update you on this as we make progress. Now, this very important slide, the last slide on sustainability. Before I hand over to Jaideep Paul.
This is one pillar that personally and all of my colleagues, we're very passionate about. We have worked on this in the last 12 months to evolve a strategy that will be at the heart of everything we're gonna be doing going forward. Our sustainability strategy. This builds on our sustainability framework, which we outlined in the annual report, around four key pillars of our business, our people, our communities, and finally, our environment. We've addressed the material topics that were identified through an extensive consultation with our stakeholders at the beginning of the year. It builds on the very strong foundations of work we've done across all of our 14 operations, and it covers every aspect of our business activity. With environmental, social, and governance criteria at its core. Fundamentally, this strategy underpins our well-established corporate purpose of transforming lives. We want to transform lives sustainably.
It demonstrates our commitment to developing the infrastructure and services that will drive good digital and financial inclusion for people across Africa. It provides a framework, a very strong framework, through which we can demonstrate our contribution to six of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, where we believe we can have the biggest impact. The sustainability strategy includes nine work streams. Nine work streams, each of them associated with the delivery of either a goal or an ongoing commitment which addresses the business material topics. This will enable us as a group to deliver sustainable growth and uphold the best governance standards. Let me just highlight a couple of interesting elements that we announced today. In our business, in addition to goals around our service quality and supply chain, we also focused on data security.
This is one of our most material topics, both internally and for our stakeholders. Our focus here is very clear. Our focus is on confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data with a commitment to guarantee that our data privacy and security controls become and remain among the best in the world. For our people, for my colleagues, we continue to aim to provide rewarding employment opportunities to all of our people across all of our markets. We're going to demonstrate this genuine commitment by achieving full diversity, gender diversity, ethnic diversity, and inclusion among all of our workforce. This is central to our culture and a key focus for our future. Accordingly, we have announced commitments that contribute towards creating a diverse and inclusive workforce, providing a best practice training and development opportunities as we maintain a healthy and safe working environment.
We continue to engage and listen to our employees. Of course, in our community pillar, in addition to focusing on promoting both digital and financial inclusion, I am particularly proud of the New Schools program, which will help transform the lives of over 1 million children in Africa. They are going to benefit from some of the things we will be doing around connectivity and around provision of zero-rated education content. Beyond this, we are going to connect 1,400 schools to the internet by 2027, and we continue to adopt schools in all of our markets. Finally, on our environment, we are committed to environmental stewardship. We are committed to reducing and eliminating the environmental impact of our operations along our entire value chain. With the major challenge here being around our commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
For those who may not be very familiar with our business, most of our greenhouse gas emissions stem from the power required for equipment at the tower sites we use to bring connectivity to the underserved communities. More often than not, these towers which are located in rural villages are not connected to electricity grid. They are powered by diesel generators. Even when grid connectivity is available, diesel generators are used for backup. The challenge gets bigger as we continue to focus on our network expansion into more rural areas to meet our targets to drive digital and financial inclusion across Africa. We don't want to drive inclusion at the expense of our climate. That is why we're working with our stakeholders in the industry to create the best framework for how we minimize the impact of our activities on the environment.
We're working with our key stakeholders, especially towercos, who own the towers, but most of them, they have not developed specific net zero emission targets, and neither have they generally adopted science-based targets for absolute reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions. They have all identified the challenge, and we are working towards solutions. For our part, it is our ambition, our plan, to achieve net zero ahead of the 2050 deadline set out in the Paris Agreement. We will drive down emissions at our own sites, the ones directly controlled by us, and we will continue to work in very close partnership with our suppliers, as well as our peers and the GSM Association to deliver on this objective. We are in the process of hiring a global expert to help us define detailed plans for meaningful carbon reduction throughout our entire value chain.
We will publish this in 2022 ahead of our first sustainability report. With that, I'm gonna hand over to Jaideep Paul, our CFO, to take you through the details of our financial results. Jaideep, over to you, please.
Thank you, Segun, and good morning and good afternoon to all of you. As you have already seen from Segun's presentation, that we continued our growth momentum and EBITDA margin expansion in line with our previous quarters. All the absolute numbers mentioned in these presentations are in reported currency, while growth rates are in constant currency other unless otherwise specified. Let me start with the overall financial highlights. Revenue grew 27.6%, while underlying EBITDA grew by 38.5% in the first half of this year in constant currency. Our half year revenue is now $2.3 billion approximately, and underlying EBITDA is in, as, about $1.1 billion. EBITDA margin for the period was 48.3%, an improvement of 381 basis point. Our balance sheet position has continued to improve.
Now our leverage ratio is at 1.5x , an improvement of improvement from 2.2 x in the previous period. Operating free cash flow at $853 million, up by more than 43%. Earnings per share before exceptional item is $0.075 , which is more than double from the previous period of $0.03 . The board has declared an interim dividend of 2 cents per share on the basis of our upgraded dividend policy, which I will elaborate further in the coming slides. Going to the next slide. The slide shows contribution from each of our key services to the revenue growth. Revenue in reported currency grew 25.2%, while constant currency growth was 27.6%.
The differential was due to currency devaluation, mainly in Nigeria and Malawi, partially offset by the appreciation in Central African franc and Ugandan shilling. All our key service segments of voice, data and mobile money contributed to the revenue growth. Voice revenue grew by 17%, data by 34%, and mobile money revenue by almost 43%. The corresponding constant currency growth rates are given in the slides. Coming to our regional performance. Nigeria delivered a strong performance in first half of the year. As mentioned by Segun, new customer acquisition restarted from April 2021 onwards, but only through regulatory approved outlets, which is currently over 7,000 for us. Accordingly, the business is now approaching the level where the monthly net customer additions are almost stabilizing. Revenue in Nigeria grew more than 32%.
Voice usage per customer per month grew by 26%, resulted in voice ARPU growth of 25%, which has helped to grow voice revenue by, approximately 21%. We continue to expand our 4G network to provide high speed data to our customers, and now almost 89% of our total sites in Nigeria are on 4G. This has helped to grow data usage per customer by almost 44% with data revenue growth of 45%. 4G data usage contributed to more than 70% of the total data usage during the second quarter of the year, up from 61% of the previous period. The data usage per customer now reached to 3.9 GB per month, and the 4G data usage per customer is at about 5.5 GB per month.
Underlying EBITDA grew by 35% with a margin improvement of 114 basis points, and the margin stands at almost 55%. ARPU and operating free cash flow are also growing during this period, up by more than 37% and 45% respectively. Coming to East Africa. Next slide. Our revenue in East Africa grew by 26%. Voice revenue grew by 22%, largely supported by customer base growth of 11% and voice ARPU growth of 8%. In East Africa, almost 84% of our total sites are on 4G. It helped us to grow data customer base by 22%, and data usage per customer per month grew by 20%. Data revenue grew more than 25%.
4G data usage now contributes to almost 59% of the total data usage, and data usage per customer now reached to 3.3 GB per month on an overall basis. 4G data usage per customer is almost at 6 GB per month. mobile money is also a key contributor in growth of East Africa region. Our mobile money revenue grew by almost 45%, driven by both customer base growth of 19% and ARPU growth of 20%. Transaction value per customer was $178 per month, an increase of 24%. Accelerated revenue growth, along with continued cost optimization, have helped us in expanding underlying EBITDA margin by almost 4 percentage point to 48.3. Operating free cash flow increased by 50%. Coming to Francophone Africa.
Strong revenue growth continues with the highest reported currency growth of 25.7% across all our three regions. Revenue grew by 22.1% in constant currency, contributed by growth in all our key services of voice, data and mobile money. Voice revenue grew by more than 13%, supported by customer base growth of more than 20%. Data customer base grew more than 32%, which has helped us to grow data revenue by 36%. 4G data usage contributed 63% of the total data usage in second quarter as compared to 52% in the prior period. The expansion of our distribution network through more agents and Airtel Money branches resulted in mobile money customer base growth of 18%.
mobile money transaction value per customer grew by 11%, which resulted in ARPU growth of more than 6% and eventually mobile money overall revenue growth was 36%. The combination of revenue growth and our continual focus on cost in the region resulted in expansion of underlying EBITDA margin by more than 7 percentage points to 40.5%. Going to the next slide. During first half of the year, our underlying EBITDA grew by 35.2% in reported currency and absolute EBITDA for first half of the year was about $1.1 billion. Currency devaluation had an adverse impact of $17 million due to devaluation in Nigerian naira and Malawian kwacha, partially offset by appreciation in the Central African franc and Ugandan shilling.
EBITDA margin for the period was 48.3%, an increase of 360 basis points in reported currency and 381 basis points in constant currency, led by both revenue growth as well as improved operational efficiencies. EBITDA flow-through for the period was more than 62% during the period. Our capital allocation policy remained same. As mentioned earlier, our priority is to invest in business and at the same time continue to aim at further reducing the overall leverage ratio. Capital guidance for the full year is around $650 million. Our leverage ratio improved to 1.5x as at 30 September 2021 as compared to 2.2 times in the previous period.
The improvement in leverage ratio was largely driven by increased cash generation, expansion in underlying EBITDA, and receipt of $375 million on account of the first closure of mobile money minority investment. Since the leverage ratio has gone down below 2, the board has approved the revision of dividend policy with a new base dividend of $0.05 per share in the financial year 2021, 2022. From the earlier base dividend of $0.04. With a progressive dividend growth of mid- to high-single-digit percentage in the subsequent years. The board has also declared an interim dividend of $0.02 per share in line with the upgraded dividend policy. We continue with our focus on further strengthening our balance sheet. Coming to the free cash flow.
We have revised our free cash flow definition to reflect nearly the real cash generation from our business. Hence, we have included lease repayments, intangible CapEx purchase, license and spectrum renewal, and payment to minority shareholders and subsidiaries to our earlier reported definition of free cash flow. Based on the new definition, our cash flow generation in the first half of the year has been stronger and generated $307 million, largely as a result of our improved EBITDA performance and marginally less cash CapEx spend, partially offset by increased cash taxes, which is resulting from the higher operating profit. Coming to the leverage slide. As you can see, our HoldCo debt has been brought down to now $1.5 billion, which is comprising of two bonds issued earlier, having a maturity in March 2023 and May 2024.
Overall debt at OpCo increased by $286 million, out of which $148 million is contributed by increase in finance lease obligation due to deployment of over 5,000 sites and an increase of $138 million in external debt. The increase in external debt at OpCo level is in line with our strategy to push down debt from HoldCo to OpCo, thereby reducing our currency exposure. The weighted average interest rate was 5.5% vis-à-vis 4.8% in the previous period, largely due to the repayment of the Euro bond in May 2021, which carried a lower rate of interest. We have consistently de-leveraged over the past few years, and our net debt to EBITDA ratio is now 1.5 x.
It's important to mention that we have been able to upstream more than $570 million from various operating units in the last 18 months. Next slide. Earnings per share before exceptional item increased from $0.03 to $0.075, an increase of almost 2.5 x over the previous period. The increase in EPS was largely contributed by expansion of operating profit, partially offset by increase in tax. Thank you very much. Now I will hand over back to Segun for the closing remarks.
Yes. Thank you, Jaideep. Finally from me on slide number 30, just a few words on our outlook. As you have seen from our results today, our business fundamentals remain very, very strong. Indeed, we have continued to improve this half on nearly every key metric. Our business has proven to be resilient even to the pandemic. You've heard from us today, highlights on a year-on-year growth rates, but they are slightly flattered due to the biggest effects of COVID-19 in Q1 of last year. Despite this, we remain mindful that our markets are continuing to experience the third wave of the pandemic, and we continue to monitor the situation accordingly for any potential impact on our economies and on our consumers. I am really excited about the opportunities for our business.
We continue to see huge potentials across each of voice, data, and mobile money due to the very low penetration levels which persist in Africa. With our continued focus on modernizing and extending the rollout of our network, continued simplification of our products, and continued improvements in our distribution networks, we should continue to benefit from growth in our markets. That growth should deliver improved profitability and allow us to continue to strengthen our balance sheet as we increase our returns to shareholders. We're gonna do this with sustainability at the center of all of our activities. We want to transform lives sustainably. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention today, and I'm now gonna open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and then one on your touchtone phone or click it on the keypad on your screen. Participants on the webcast may submit their questions in the bottom of the page in the text box provided. Our first question is from Jonathan Kennedy-Good of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. Just on the upcoming deadline on the 31st of October related to the National Identification Number registration process. Do you expect that deadline to be extended again? If it isn't, can you give us some sense of what, you know, would be the next steps in terms of do you have to disconnect subscribers or will there be a grace period in which people can? There'll be some leniency?
Then finally on Nigeria, again, can you tell us what the kind of cash balance is at the Nigerian OpCo level and whether you've managed to upstream any Nigerian cash recently and perhaps some guidance there on whether that may be forthcoming soon, if it hasn't been the case, would be helpful? Thanks.
Thank you, Jonathan. Let me address the first question first on the NIN. Yes, the deadline is end of October. As we recall it, deadlines have been shifted, I mean, many times in the past. I believe there is room for it to be shifted again. We've not received any definite direction on what to do if the deadline is not shifted. We've managed to increase the number of customers that we've attached their name to their phone number. As I speak now, in terms of percentage of our revenues, we've more or less attached almost 70% of numbers that contribute 70% of our revenues. Another one or two days, we would get a final direction from government.
I'm very hopeful that extension will be extended for the sake of the many, many customers who, for one reason or the other, COVID inclusive, did not have the opportunity to go and register for NIN. We would continue to engage the government for what is best for the security situation in the country, for the customers and for our business at the end of the day. On the cash balance in Nigeria, I'm gonna ask Jaideep to talk to this. Jaideep, please.
Thanks, Segun. The result, we all know or are aware that, the dollar availability in Nigeria has been a challenge for us over the last 12 months. As a consequence, we have been unable to fully benefit at the group level from the strong cash generation of our local business. The situation, of course, is now improving, and we have managed to access almost $80 million during this period. That entire thing has been used to pay CapEx because our first preference is for the investment and making sure that all the suppliers' liabilities are met. We also have in pipeline of another potential of upstream in the next couple of months. We should be...
The other point, as I mentioned, that while Nigeria, we all are aware of the issue, but we have been also able to upstream about $570 million during last 18 months from the various other OpCos. On the last part, on the cash balance, as on 30th September, the cash balance was roughly about $410 or $412 million. And then, and a part of that obviously will be now utilized for the buyback, Airtel Nigeria buying back the shares. If everybody participates, roughly about $148 million will be utilized to use that cash.
Great. Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thank you, Jonathan.
Thank you. Does that answer all your questions, Jonathan?
Yes, it does. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Maurice Patrick of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Oh, yeah. Morning, afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. A couple from me, please. First of all, apologies if you have answered these 'cause I joined the call slightly late. From a mobile money perspective, you made reference in the presentation around investments you're making in distribution into the building of agents. I'd be curious to understand a bit around how that's helping you differentiate in terms of that and the quantum of what that investment really is. Like linked to that, I don't know if you did provide an update on getting a mobile money license in Nigeria, but some update there'd be helpful.
Just lastly, if I may, you know, I've had a good look at your sustainability announcement this morning, which looks very sensible and laudable. It seems broadly consistent with what most telcos, especially in emerging markets, are already doing and also what you're doing already. I'd be curious to understand what you would see changing at MTN Group because of the launch of this strategy. Thank you.
Thank you, Maurice. On the mobile money, distribution is one of the key pillars we're using to drive the penetration. What we've done is to have a mix of infrastructure that is exclusive to us, those we are sharing with third parties. For the infrastructure that is exclusive to us, they are categorized into three buckets. We have what we call Airtel Money branches. These are brick-and-mortar physical structures. We have Airtel Money kiosks. These are basically movable structures, and we have mini shops. These three different formats, they're exclusively for our business. We don't share space with any other operator in those shops. We now have the multi-brand operators, which can carry competing mobile money products. What we've done is to invest in this infrastructure ahead of the curve.
For a number of years, we started and been building this infrastructure in remote areas in most of our operations. In the urban areas, we put the money branches. Across these three different formats, the kiosk, which are mobile structures, the mini shops, small shops, then the mobile branches, which of course is banks, small structures but, can take up to three people. I don't see many operators with this unique infrastructure. Most of the operators rely on the multi-brand retailers who stock and serve all of the operators. This is one unique thing that we've created and is driving very deep penetration of mobile money in rural areas and in forests. Your second question is on mobile money in Nigeria. I spoke about this earlier on. We continue to engage the regulators in the country on assessing this license.
Like, you know, we've applied for the license. We've not received a no answer. We don't have a yes answer either. All we do is working with regulators and finding a common front that make it easier for millions of Nigerians to have access to mobile money opportunities. The answer is we continue the engagement with regulators to make sure that this license is issued to us. As to when, I don't have visibility as to when we're gonna be issued with the license. Your third point on sustainability. A number of things are different. The first one is like we're making public pronouncement on how we like to be measured, and the measurement is not gonna be only by internal metrics. We also committed to metrics which can be assessed by third parties. That is one.
The second thing is like we are actually making this as part of key performance indicators for every key function. It's actually part of my own KPI value as a CEO. That's also another big shift. It's part of the commitment I've made to the board, to the stakeholders, that I want to be measured on how I deliver on this agenda. That's another second shift. The third one, it's actually the right thing to do. It's actually a good thing to do, to do your business in a manner that doesn't destroy the environment. I firmly believe that to be a great business, you must be a good business. To be a good business, you must have a huge concern for the way you treat your employees, for the way you treat your environment, for value you create in your communities.
I mean, it's just natural that we put a strong focus and raise the level of visibility of this among my colleagues and among all the stakeholders. This is something big for us. We want to be called out. We want to focus on this as a pillar to drive our transformation objective. We're committing to transforming lives. How more can you do this? You do it sustainably. That's why we're calling this our sustainability today as a key strategic pillar of our business going forward.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Rohit Modi of Citi. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Just a couple of questions from my side. Firstly, in terms of current inflationary environment, particularly on energy and power side, do you see any kind of pressure for rest of the year and next year in terms of your, you know, escalators with tower costs? Do you see that you can have higher lease costs going forward? Secondly, in terms of M&A opportunities, you mentioned about opportunities on fiber and data center. Can you specify, like, is there any specific markets that you see fiber opportunities can come up or you are looking for? And also on the M&A side, are you open for any kind of M&A on your current footprint if there are any opportunities given your balance sheet right now?
Thank you.
Thank you, Rohit. I'll take the first question. I didn't quite get the question, but I believe you're talking about the cost of power that is being passed to us by the telcos. If that is the question, we continue to engage our partners on mix of sources of power to mitigate the cost of diesel that is implied in the generator that they use for giving us power. We have different arrangements with different telcos, where now the cost of power is passed through to us. I believe we've got the right mechanism in place that would ensure a shared mechanism so that not all the costs are completely passed on to us. I remember for the telco as well, we're sharing with a number of other telcos on every tower space.
If that's a question, we've got a mechanism in place to monitor the cost of the power that is not fully passed on to us. On your second question on M&A, we're setting up a fiber corporation in one of the new offices we opened in Dubai, and this fiber co would monetize the international fiber asset that, I mean, we buy into. That is one. Beyond this, we're also looking at creating, I mean, fiber operations in a number of key countries where we have significant fiber footprint, and that would be the core of our fiber corporation. Are we open to other opportunities? Yes. We continue to see what fits our fiber infrastructure and how we can leverage that for stronger value for our shareholders. In terms of data center, again, by nature of our business, we do operate data centers.
They are not Tier III, but there's an opportunity to upgrade a number of them in key countries to Tier III. If you recall in my presentation, I listed this as future opportunities that we're looking at. Do we pick a number of countries where we have, I mean, sufficiently large data center and actually convert them into Tier III data center to serve a number of other operators apart from our own use? That is one option we're looking at. I'll come back to you as we finalize our views on whether we're gonna scale up this in our data centers or we're gonna build entirely greenfield data center to really support the increased data requirements of Africans. Your last question on M&A, you know, we have a number of live countries where there's still sufficient room for growth.
Nigeria, as big as we are in Nigeria, we still have a lot of room for growth. Same thing in Tanzania and Uganda. We're gonna continue to grow organically. If we see a sufficient fit in any of our 14 countries where we think value is gonna be created, we're not shy from looking at the opportunities on its own merit.
Thank you.
Just one point I want to add on the fuel price questions. While changes in fuel price have some correlation with the energy billing, not all our sites are fully or even partially exposed to the diesel fuel price increase. Because approximately half of our sites operate on grid electricity, and as a primary power, and alternative source of energy are also available. In sites which are not connected to grid power, alternative primary source of power such as batteries, solar, which are being used in some places, hence the full impact of fuel inflation may not be experienced at all sites. As part of our cost optimization initiative, we continue to invest in more energy efficient equipment, such as using equipment that has no cooling requirement or the cooling consumes a disproportionate amount of power.
Over time, we are pretty hopeful that these initiatives should, you know, reduce the impact of the energy cost increase.
Very helpful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from Madhvendra Singh of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thanks a lot for taking my question, and congrats on a very good set of results. Just a few clarification questions. Firstly, on the revenue growth side, I understand that growth is primarily driven from the higher usage, but I also wanted to understand the trends on the pricing side. Have you been able to increase effective prices in any way at all, voice, data or mobile money, you know, any of these sides in specific markets, as well? Quite keen to understand the dynamics in Nigeria as well, especially on the pricing side. The second question is on your 4G network. I understand that, you know, 90% of your network is now on single RAN, but your 4G coverage is obviously below that.
I want to understand how much of the network actually is connected with high speed backhaul, such as fiber, versus, let's say, you know, copper backhaul. Thank you.
Thank you. I will take the second question, and I'll ask Jaideep to address your first question on revenue growth metrics, yeah. In terms of 4G infrastructure, yes. Over 80% of our towers have already gotten 4G on them or they are 4G ready. As I speak now, I've got over 60,000 kilometers of fiber in different parts of operations in Africa. We do selective expansion of fiber in urban cities versus rural cities. In the key urban cities, we've got a larger percentage of our fiber infrastructure concentrated in big cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Nairobi, Kinshasa. What we do is selective expansion of our fiber infrastructure to make sure our backhaul capacity is sufficient to backhaul the huge data traffic coming into that network.
Yes, we do have sufficient fiber infrastructure, and we continue to increase this fiber infrastructure so that we don't stifle the growth of data traffic on our network. We do this selectively depending on the consumption patterns and the level of development of the neighbor we're looking at. Jaideep, do you want to take the question on revenue?
Sure. On the first question, let me first try to address this in a little different way that, as we have more focus on more-for-more concept of bundling, whether it is voice, whether it is data, and of course, Airtel Money is at a more transaction level, and therefore the yield is more important than any other pricing. For voice and bundle, we are gradually shifting away from a price-based, you know, game from there to the bundle-based thing. The concept of bundle is that if a person is paying higher ARPU, they get disproportionately higher usage, either minutes or data, especially for data.
Which has resulted into a fantastic growth, as you can see, with the customer addition, the usage is going up, ARPU is going up, and therefore the revenue is going up. The focus has really shifted away. Of course, we can't take away our eyes from the basic pricing or the realization. The whole concept is moving away from there. One of the other thing I want to add, that as we move towards the bundle penetration, increase in bundle penetration and going into a more for more concept, even we started rationalizing some of the pay-as-you-go rate, which was disproportionately higher as compared to the bundle rates. The overall scheme of thing is keep very simple 2, 3 products, add customer, and give more for more value to the customer, therefore the ARPU increase.
You can see that happening in all three buckets of voice data and Airtel Money. That is exactly what we are driving, and that is exactly what is giving us result now in terms of this consistent growth.
Thanks a lot, Jaideep.
That's it.
Just, wanted to also, you know, understand when you talk about bundles, how popular are these bundles now? If you could explain in terms of, penetration of bundles in your overall customer base, what percentage of customer base is now using bundles?
If I look at data customers-
Yes.
The bundle penetration will be more than almost 85%-90%.
Right.
Means most of the customers have moved into bundle, and that is where to avoid any bill shock. That means when the bundle gets over, it's not that they fall back on the pay-as-you-go rate, and then there is a bill shock and the customer dissatisfaction. That's why the pay-as-you-go rate has also been brought down. Technically, almost, I would say that our objective is to move all the customers into bundle-based kind of package, so that it is easier for customer, it is simple for customer. Data we have about 85%-90% penetration. Voice will be in the range of between 70% and 80%, depending on which OpCo we are talking about. On an average, between 70% and 80% of customers on voice bundle.
Great. Thanks a lot, Jaideep. Thank you. Bye.
Thank you. The next question is from [audio distortion] of UBS. Please go ahead. John, if you can go ahead with your question.
Hi. You've had very good success rolling out these data networks and driving traffic. At what point do you start to think we start to see diminishing returns from this, i.e., how much farther can you push the ARPU in key countries? Second unrelated question. In Nigeria in particular, we've seen some other entities make a market to get money out of the country and pay effectively haircuts. Let's call it 20, 25% on average. Conceptually, is that something that works for you? Or should we think about cash flow prioritization in that country towards things that are more like the share buyback programs? Thanks.
I'll take the second question and Jaideep would take the first one. Especially on Nigeria, like Jaideep explained earlier. We continue to pay whatever the market price is and to export dollars. But our focus now is to utilize some of the money locally. We've spoken about the share buyback we're doing very attractive returns for the minority shareholders and also giving a lot of value to the shareholders of Airtel Africa. That's one use of the money. The second use is on making sure that the CapEx vendors are paid and that we don't disturb or distort our CapEx rollout, which is one key element of our growth. We're doing that very deliberately as well. Finally, selectively, when we have any good pricing options and legally available options to repatriate any dollar, we do exploit those opportunities.
I didn't quite get your first question. I don't know if you want to repeat, or maybe if Jaideep got the first question, if I just come aside.
Yeah, just to reiterate, you've had a very good expansion in the ARPU and the data revenue base, off the back of substantial rollout of data networks. There conceptually has to be, I think, limits to kind of return on this, i.e., how far you can push ARPU growth in key countries. Just wondering where you think we are on that journey. Is that helpful?
If you look at penetration of mobile internet in most of our countries is still, I mean, very low. There's a study that was released by GSMA about 2-3 weeks ago that confirmed that about 19% of Africans don't have access to mobile broadband. They don't have access at all. Not that it's available, they don't have it. A further percentage, when they have access, they can't even afford to buy it, or where they can afford to buy they don't have the right level of digital literacy to use it. That's the second opportunity for growth. One is increasing the coverage to the 19% who don't have access.
Second, even those who have the access, either they don't have the money to afford it, so affordability will drive further penetration, or they lack the digital literacy to use it, so giving digital education will bridge that gap. Beyond that, if you look at smartphone penetration in Africa, you see that very, very low levels. Across our footprint is about 30% smartphone penetration. At 30% smartphone, and as prices of these smartphones are getting cheaper and cheaper, we're getting a larger number of people entering that franchise. That's another pointer to the opportunity available for growing the data business. We continue to grow very strong double digit on the back of expanding the 4G network. That is creating the availability, but other parts of the ecosystem, they are supporting this huge growth potential.
As devices become cheaper, they become more available, more people are getting into the franchise. As we also expand digital literacy with teaching people how to use a smartphone for many more things, we have another scope to increase in the usage of data. Beyond the focus on output from current customer, there's also a scope for expansion to bring more people to the franchise, given the low level of penetration we have in most parts, I mean, of the countries where we operate in Africa.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from [Viraj Dassing] of Axis Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for being given the chance to ask a question, and congratulations to the team for the strong result, and also congratulations to the CEO for his first investor call. My question is fairly simple. Recently, the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced the eNaira. Do you see this as a threat for Airtel mobile money business going forward? Secondly, we have noticed that during the year there has been some issues between local banks in Nigeria and telcos with regards to collaboration. Do you believe that the current banking infrastructure in Nigeria is conducive enough for collaboration between banks and telcos, which would eventually end up with an increment in financial inclusion for consumers? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your best wishes. Let me take the second question first. I mean, I think there's a sweet spot, a spot that the banks and the telcos must find that works for everybody. There's no point in fighting over a fixed pie when you can make the pie bigger. The spot we're looking at is a spot that is not being mined, not being touched by anyone. We've got a lot of people who are still outside the financial system. They're the ones that we plan to touch with mobile money. For whatever reason, the banks are unable to touch those people now. That's the argument we're giving to the regulators, that give us a chance, give us the opportunity. Just like we've democratized mobile communication, we want the opportunity to also democratize the financial inclusion.
That's what we're bringing to the table. It's not a win or lose. It's not as if when we win, the banks are losing. We're still gonna keep the cash at the banks anyway. I see all of us coming to a conclusion that, I mean, what is best for the country is when banks and telcos collaborate to actually exploit this opportunity that is beneficial to the many people in areas that are not touched by banks. I'm very optimistic that we're gonna get to that point with the support and guidance of the Central Bank of Nigeria. We'll get to a point where the banks and telcos would collaboratively find this sweet spot that would benefit millions of Nigerians that are currently being excluded from financial activity. On the eNaira launch, I see every threat as an opportunity.
What the Central Bank is launched is a wallet that is gonna be maintained at the Central Bank for now, and this wallet is gonna be funded with money you transfer from your bank account. That's what is gonna happen in the first few stages. Remember, the infrastructure that we create is to ensure people who don't have bank accounts to actually get into financial activity. Meaning we are providing points where they can go to and convert their cash into electronic money. That is what is missing, and that's what we bring to the table. We've got many outlets, whether we talk about kiosks, whether we talk about mini shops, whether we talk about branches we've created, where customers can walk into. Customers who don't have bank accounts, they can walk into and convert their cash into electronic money. That is what we bring.
I see the regulator finding another model whereby both telcos and banks can collaborate and enable millions of Nigerians who don't have bank accounts, who are unable to even access this eNaira, to come into the financial system. That's what we're hoping for, and we're gonna continue to engage the Central Bank and the banks on finding the sweet spot and the misgivings that anyone may harbor.
Thank you. The next question is from Myuran Rajaratnam of MIBFA. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Congratulations on a great quarter and half. Perhaps you can help me unpack it a little bit. I mean, you mentioned there were base effects as you know, due to COVID and, you know, the recovery quarter as well, you know, there would be base effects. You know, and you know, you have all these bundles and products that are finding resonance with your customers. If you sort of, you know, maybe you can help me unpack and normalize for the COVID quarter, which is probably quite a difficult thing to do. Are you finding that the run rate is accelerating, or is it sort of holding steady, or is it slowly slightly slowing down? You know, if you sort of try and normalize for the COVID effect. Thanks.
Yeah. I would ask Jaideep to give more flesh. I think the run rate is more around 22%, which is like Q2 second quarter run rate. Jaideep give more flesh as to the various movement between the various quarters. Jaideep, please.
Okay. To answer your question, quarter one was on constant currency basis was about 33%. That was because our previous year quarter one being the first quarter of the pandemic and the lockdown massive lockdown across geographies. The growth rate was seen as abnormally high. If you refer to our Q1 published trading update, even we mentioned there that there should be a normalization done. Now, it's very difficult to lay our hand exactly on how much normalization we should do for quarter one. If we ignore that quarter, and if you go back to the history of before pandemic, you will see that the growth rate remained by and large in the same range of what we have achieved in quarter two.
It is more or less. Before pandemic, if you go back to quarter four and then post the initial phase of pandemic, if you see the subsequent quarters, we gradually gain back, and now it is more or less stabilized at that, this level of quarter two. Which is, I strongly believe that that's also a very good double-digit growth. It's very difficult to. As you know, that we don't give any forward guidance on these matters. But fundamentals of the market where we operate haven't changed. The opportunity remains same. The growth opportunity remains same. Some of the data point I can tell you that, the unique penetration, average unique penetration in the markets where we operate is still about 50%.
If you look at the voice usage, average usage is 253 minutes, 255 minutes. Which is far, far below than even if you take some of the, you know, Western world or even the Far East or Southeast Asia. If you see the voice usage, it's far, far higher than where we are. There is a long runway to go in terms of increasing the usage and therefore the ARPU. Obviously customer addition, because with unique customer penetration of 50%, there is still a long runway to cover for the growth. Same as data. Data, Segun has already covered, so I'm not repeating it. The internet penetration is very low.
Even if you look at the 4G usage as a benchmark, we are still far below than the average of what we have seen in other parts of the globe. As we expand our 4G network continuously, we continuously see this expansion happening with the smartphone penetration going up. There are ample opportunity of growth which still exists in of all the sub-Saharan African market, and especially the markets where we operate.
Does it answer your question?
Yes, maybe I can follow up on it. In high inflation countries, it's sort of noticeable when the revenue. It is sort of acceptable that the revenue growths are high. I see in your Francophone countries where, you know, they are euro-linked those currencies, you're still showing very good growth. It's clearly the fundamental drivers are strong in these countries. Is there any country where it's sort of slightly softer than what you expected? Any large operating country?
I don't want to give country wise details. We don't give country wise details. Overall, consistently, if you look at it and some of the results of our large competitors are in public domain, and you can yourself see that, there are difference of growth percentage between different operator. At the end of the day, it is a matter of how we execute our strategy, how well we execute our strategy, and how simple offer and products we offer to the customer, so that the customers have trust, they understand the product, and they have the full trust on us. I think these are the few fundamental on which our all fourteen countries operate.
That's precisely the reason we have been able to execute our strategies, our six pillar strategy, which we consistently talked about since last so many quarters. That has resulted into the growth.
Thank you very much, sir.
Specifically, if you look at the Francophone countries, we're a bit late in our network investment. We accelerated only two years ago. The outcomes are what you're beginning to see now. It just shows the level of latent demand in Africa. You plant the tower, you put 4G on it, usage happens almost automatically. It shows the depth of opportunity that is available in Africa, and that's why you're seeing our Francophone countries coming late to the party because we started the investment only two years ago, and that is showing what you see. Just the things we've done differently, we're expanding the network in Francophone. We're rolling out 4G network. We're reworking our distribution systems and revenues flow. We're beginning to also penetrate mobile money in the key countries in Francophone Africa, and we're seeing huge money coming from simple penetration of mobile money in Francophone countries.
Thank you very much, sir. The next question is from Abdullateef Grillo of Meristem Securities. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation and congratulations on the results. First off, I want to ask you about the new sustainability strategy. Like, I want to know how would you expect that translates to profitability for the group in the long run? Secondly, on the group's cash position, I noticed that there was no significant change in the cash position despite the closing, the first closing of some of the deals. I expect the proceeds from that to have been received. Have all of that gone into your debt servicing? Because even on the debt side, the decline in debt is not so much. I want to know about the cash proceeds from the deals that you closed. Also, for the minority buyouts in Nigeria, I would just like to know the rationale behind it.
Like why are you buying out minority stake in Nigerian subsidiary? Thank you.
Okay. I'll take a couple of the questions and Jaideep would speak to the cash position. Let me take the last one first on the minority shareholders that we're buying out. We've given very attractive terms for the share buyback. We think it's valuable to the minority shareholders, but of course it's also a lot of value to our business, the holding company, Airtel Africa PLC, given the fact that we also listed in the Nigerian Stock Exchange and we listed in London. There's value around for both local shareholders who choose to take the offer. There's no compulsion. If they choose to take the offer it's very, very attractive. Ultimately we're creating value for our ultimate shareholders in the business. That's why we're doing what we're doing.
In terms of sustainability, I really don't want us to measure sustainability in terms of dollar and cents, because that's not the ultimate objective. It's about preserving the environment for us to continue to even run any business. Ultimately it might touch on P&L, it might touch on the balance sheet, but the ultimate test for me is not so much how much money we're gonna make from a sustainability agenda. It's about doing what is right all of the time. That should be the paramount. That's what creates any sustainable business, doing what is right.
It's the right thing to do to have the right policies around your employees to make sure there is no child labor in your supply chain, to make sure the data of your customer is protected, to make sure that your employees they have a voice on the table, to make sure you have a diverse workforce, to make sure all the ethnicities are represented when decisions have been taken. I'm just unable to put value on this, but ultimately, we don't want to destroy the environment. As we're creating digital inclusion, as we are creating financial inclusion, it must be done in such a way that there are people around to enjoy what we are creating. Which is why I don't want to go into the route of monetizing our sustainability agenda. Of course, it can come with some benefits in other forms, but that's not the focus.
We're doing this because we know it is the right thing to do, and that's the only way I'm gonna measure the effectiveness of the activities should line up against our sustainability agenda. It is the right thing to do for our business. It is the right thing to do for our communities, and that is what we're gonna do. Jaideep, you want to speak about the cash flow position.
Yeah, sure. Sure, Segun. On the cash position, if I understand the question correctly, you were—your question was that, at a HoldCo level, how this first closing money has been utilized. If that is the question, let me answer that. You know that in the month of May, we have paid a Euro bond, and the total payout was roughly about $950 million. While paying that bond, we have taken about half a billion dollars of bank debt, and paid off the balance money out of the internal accrual. Now that debt which we have taken to repay the bond has fully been paid.
If you see our slide number 28 of the presentation, you can see at a HoldCo level, we are left with only two bonds, which is one bond which is falling due in 2023 for repayment, and the other bond is falling due in 2024. This is how 2023 is about $505 million and $1 billion is in 2024. That is all we are left at a HoldCo level as a debt. As we have mentioned earlier, we have also started pushing down as a strategy, converting or pushing down the debt at a operating unit level and at a local currency to avoid the currency devaluation risk and the impact of that on the HoldCo level debt.
Continuously, our teams are working towards that objective, and you can see that the OpCo level local currency debt has gone up from as compared to last year. It has gone up. You see as a USD dollar increase. It's purely because we have taken that under some kind of a compulsion because of the non-availability of dollar in Nigeria. We had to take about $85 million of loan to pay our vendors and the CapEx vendors, mainly CapEx vendors, in Nigeria. That is broadly the way we have managed the entire portfolio. HoldCo level, practically two bonds which are left and all our debts have started moving towards at the operating unit level. Which also gives us, apart from the devaluation risk, tax efficiency.
Because at a HoldCo level, whatever interest we have, we are paying on that, we don't have any tax shield whereas at a OpCo level, the interest which we are paying, which is higher than a HoldCo level, but at the same time it comes with approximately 30% tax shield. That's the overall strategy which we have implemented.
Thank you very much, sir. We have no further questions on the conference call. We'd like to take some questions from the webcast.
Thank you, Chris. This is Pier. I'm conscious of time. Perhaps I will just ask one question from the web, and then we'll address all the other questions separately to the people who have asked. Segun, Jaideep, one question. Congratulations, fantastic results. What is the net debt target for the company now? And are there any inorganic growth opportunities that you want to pursue, and if so, in which markets?
Thank you very much for the best wishes. In terms of net debt target, what we're looking on is how to strengthen our balance sheet. Of course, we're gonna continue to deleverage. The objective there is just to strengthen our balance sheet. We've gotten, I mean, to below 1.9x of leverage now. We continue to work this down, but the overall thing, the overall objective is to just strengthen our balance sheet to be ready for any opportunities that may become available in any of our countries. That's the straight answer to our net debt target. Beyond that as well, Jaideep just explained to you that we're gonna be pushing a lot of debts to the local operating companies so that there's tax shield. Just as when a tax shield opportunity when you push debts to local, of course.
Also there's a natural hedge where you match the currency of your debt with the currency of your revenue. There's natural hedge in that. We continue to push that. Debts go back to, of course, where they earn in local currency and the debt is taken in local currency. We free the OpCo of any potential FX issues, and we continue to do that with the ultimate objective of strengthening the balance sheet.
Any inorganic growth opportunities?
Yeah. Last question is on opportunities available. I've described a few of the opportunities in areas which are adjacent to our business. I mentioned a fiber co-opportunity. I mentioned the data center opportunity. We're also looking at fiber to the homes. In one of my presentation, I shared how very few homes are connected to broadband in Africa. It's also one area we're looking at. There's plenty of scope to grow organically. Beyond the organic opportunities available for growth, we keep on exploring other non-organic areas that may add value to our business. At the right time, I would, I mean, discuss this, I mean, with the larger investment community.
Thank you very much, Segun. Operator, we can now close the call. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that then concludes this event. You may disconnect.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, everybody.