MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita has been named a founding commissioner of the AI for Good Global Commission, a new United Nations body tasked with steering artificial intelligence towards expanding digital access, strengthening trust and accelerating responsible economic impact.
The commission is an initiative of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN's specialised agency for information and communication technologies, and holds its inaugural meeting in Geneva from 7 to 10 July.
A who's who of the AI age
Mupita joins a 44-member commission co-chaired by Rwandan president Paul Kagame and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, with ITU secretary-general Doreen Bogdan-Martin serving as deputy chair. Fellow commissioners include Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, alongside heads of state, ministers and the leaders of international organisations.
“It’s an honour to be one of the founding commissioners of the AI for Good Global Commission,” Mupita said, adding that MTN believes AI can advance health, education, food security and industrial productivity — provided the technology is safe, ethical and globally inclusive.
The new body builds on the work of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, which helped shape global priorities for extending digital inclusion and economic development.
Why MTN wants to be in the room
The appointment is more than a ceremonial nod. AI sits at the centre of MTN's Ambition 2030 strategy, and the group has been putting real capital behind it.
R30bnValue MTN aims to unlock from AI over the next three to five yearsSource: MTN$2bnMTN's commitment to building data centres through joint ventures
The group has committed as much as $2 billion to building data centres through joint ventures, and plans to turn its cellphone tower sites into “mini data centres” for AI workloads — a concept known in the industry as AI-RAN. Mupita was also elected deputy chair of the global telecoms body the GSMA in early 2025, part of a broader push for a bigger African voice in global digital policy.
What it means
Global rules on AI access, safety and infrastructure are being written now, and Africa has often been a spectator in these debates. A South African-led company at the table matters: the commission's decisions will influence how quickly the continent shares in AI's economic upside. For MTN shareholders, the appointment reinforces the group's positioning of AI as a growth engine — though its R30 billion value target remains a company ambition, not a promise.
