New role for former MTN Zambia head

Farhad Khan, former MTN Zambia CEO, has been appointed as executive for the MTN Group's Enterprise Business division, effective as of 1 July.

MTN says the appointment of an internal candidate to what it terms a “critical function”, is part of the company's “deliberate talent investment strategy” and is integral to the group's plans to source incremental revenue from ICT business services.

As head of the newly-created portfolio, says MTN, Khan will report to the group chief commercial officer, Christian de Faria.

“MTN has rolled out a number of initiatives in the last 18 months, in line with our ICT strategy. However, we have identified that we can achieve more through improved coordination. As a result, we believe that our enterprise and ICT focus as a group would be enhanced by a central execution function,” says De Faria.

According to MTN, some of the structural changes in line with this motivation include an enterprise segment focus with standalone profit and loss, and targets on new ICT revenue streams.

“[The enterprise segment] will create and align the enterprise teams across all operations to ensure that the focus placed on enterprise is consistent and efficient. The appointment of Farhad is integral to these changes, particularly the need to gain traction on the new business lines,” adds De Faria.

Khan joined MTN in 2003 as GM for the business segment in the MTN SA marketing department. In this role, he oversaw the launch of BlackBerry in SA, as well as the creation of the partner environment for data and connectivity.

In 2005, he was part of the core team deployed to Iran, tasked with setting up operations in his role as executive for marketing and customer relations.

In 2008, when MTN Group acquired the Verizon Africa operations, Khan led the integration of Verizon into MTN SA operations, overseeing aspects such as ISP, HR, processes, technology and culture.

MTN says, as CEO of MTN Zambia since September 2009, Khan and his team were responsible for the turnaround of the business operation, growing its market share from 20% to almost 38% in less than three years. “In the same period, MTN Zambia grew subscribers from 700 000 to 2.5 million, and improved operating profit by 300%.

Before joining MTN, Khan held senior management roles at Accenture, Nokia and Telkom SA.