In the same fortnight of February 2026, two of Nigeria’s most powerful listed companies crossed a threshold that would have seemed unimaginable two years ago: MTN Nigeria Communications and Dangote Cement each reported profit after tax exceeding one trillion naira. It is the kind of convergence that rewrites an equity market’s narrative.
MTN Nigeria posted a profit after tax of N1.11 trillion for the full year 2025 — its first ever — swinging from a N400.4 billion loss in 2024. Dangote Cement simultaneously disclosed PAT that crossed N1 trillion for the first time in its history, with profit before tax surging 109.2% to N1.53 trillion. The results were published on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) within a day of each other in late February.
Together, they signal something that equity investors have waited years to see: Nigeria’s largest listed companies delivering dollar-scale profits in a stabilising macroeconomic environment.
What Drove the MTN Turnaround
MTN Nigeria’s recovery is the more dramatic of the two. The operator lost N400.4 billion in 2024, a loss driven primarily by foreign exchange losses as the naira collapsed following Nigeria’s FX liberalisation in mid-2023. By 2025, the same liberalisation that crushed earnings became a tailwind: the naira stabilised, FX-related losses reversed into gains, and operational momentum accelerated.
Service revenue grew 55.1% to N5.17 trillion, powered by data revenue of N2.8 trillion — up 74.5% — and voice revenue of N1.9 trillion, up 42.1%. EBITDA more than doubled, reaching N2.7 trillion with a margin of 52.7%, up 13.6 percentage points year-on-year. Free cash flow grew 215.5% to N1.2 trillion, even as capital expenditure exceeded N1 trillion as the operator invested heavily in 4G expansion and fibre infrastructure.
Active data users grew 11.6% to 53.2 million, reflecting the structural shift to mobile internet that continues to underpin telecom revenue growth across sub-Saharan Africa. MTN Nigeria now has 87.3 million subscribers.
The company declared a final dividend of N15 per share — a signal of restored financial confidence. Its market capitalisation reached approximately N14.9 trillion by mid-February, making it briefly the most valuable stock on the NGX.
Dangote: Margin Discipline Over Volume
Dangote Cement’s route to the trillion-naira profit club was different but equally instructive. Revenue grew a more modest 20.3% to N4.31 trillion, against a 0.9% decline in cement volumes to 27.5 million tonnes. The profit surge — PAT more than doubled — was built on deliberate margin management, cost discipline, and an intensified export strategy.
The company executed 34 clinker shipments to Ghana and Cameroon in 2025, with cement and clinker exports rising 18.6%. That pivot to export revenues, denominated in harder currencies, provided a natural hedge against naira volatility and drove the profitability expansion that volume-led peers could not replicate.
Dangote Cement’s market capitalisation stands at N10.95 trillion — the second-most valuable company on the NGX — marginally ahead of MTN Nigeria’s N10.92 trillion. Two companies, each worth more than ten trillion naira, dominating an exchange that was viewed as an emerging-market backwater just three years ago.
The Interlocking Signal: Mupita Joins Dangote Fertiliser
One corporate appointment in January 2026 crystallises where Nigeria’s capital markets are heading. Dangote Industries named MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita to the board of Dangote Fertiliser Limited, with an NGX listing explicitly part of the rationale.
Mupita has form here. He led MTN Nigeria’s listing on the NGX in 2019 — a transaction considered a landmark for the exchange — and guided the group through the Nigeria FX crisis that produced the 2024 losses now being reversed. His appointment to the Dangote Fertiliser board brings capital markets credibility to a business that produces approximately three million metric tonnes of granulated urea annually from a $2.5 billion complex in Lagos and has global ambitions to become the world’s largest fertiliser producer by 2028.
If Dangote Fertiliser lists, it would add another mega-cap to an exchange already being re-rated by global investors.
Foreign Capital Is Returning
The market data confirms the shift. Foreign investor deal volumes on the NGX reached $1.97 billion in 2025 — the highest in 19 years and a 211% increase on $633 million in 2024. Market capitalisation climbed to approximately N123.9 trillion by late February 2026 and N126.1 trillion by early March, with the NGX All Share Index posting a 83.92% gain over the past 12 months.
Nigeria’s trajectory stands out even in a continent-wide comparison. The JSE All Share Index gained 37.7% in local currency and 56.7% in USD terms over the same period. African exchanges collectively led USD-denominated equity returns globally, according to African Capital Markets News — a development that has drawn attention from emerging-market and frontier fund managers who largely exited the continent during the 2022–2024 downturn.
The re-entry of foreign capital into NGX-listed equities is not indiscriminate, however. Analysts at Coronation Research note that investors are concentrating in liquid, large-cap names with transparent earnings and credible governance — precisely the profile that MTN Nigeria and Dangote Cement now represent. Illiquid mid-caps are seeing far less foreign interest.
Africa’s Brand Power Rising, Too
The period has also produced a reputational milestone for African telecoms. Brand Finance’s Telecoms 150 2026 report ranked Safaricom fifth among the world’s strongest telecom brands globally with a Brand Strength Index score of 88.0 out of 100, with MTN ranked sixth at 87.3. Vodacom placed 16th. Four African operators feature in the global top 20 — a striking representation for a continent often dismissed by global industry analysts.
The COMESA Competition Commission’s clearance of the Safaricom-Vodacom cross-holding restructuring in early 2026 further underscores the regional consolidation dynamic reshaping African telecom, with implications for how cross-listed entities and institutional investors value the sector.
What Investors Should Watch
MTN Group’s full-year results, due on the JSE on or around 16 March 2026, will provide the definitive validation of the Africa telecoms recovery story. The group has guided for headline earnings per share of between 1,264 and 1,284 cents — against 98 cents in 2024, representing growth of over 1,000%. Nigeria and Ghana are the primary drivers.
Risks remain real: Nigeria’s FX stability is not guaranteed, political uncertainty can shift sentiment rapidly, and the NGX’s liquidity, while improving, remains thin compared to developed markets. A single bad macro quarter could accelerate the kind of foreign capital flight that punished Nigerian equities in 2023.
But for the first time in years, the direction of travel for Nigeria’s capital markets is clear. Two of its largest companies have delivered trillion-naira profits. A third mega-cap listing is being prepared. Foreign investors are returning at their fastest pace in two decades. The question for 2026 is not whether the re-rating has begun — it clearly has — but how durable it proves to be.
MTN Nigeria and Dangote Cement did not respond to requests for comment by publication time. Market data sourced from NGX, Business Day, and TechAfrica News.
UphivaBETAR
Joseph Busari
