MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita has been named a commissioner on the AI for Good Global Commission, a new initiative of the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU) charged with expanding digital access, strengthening trust and accelerating economic impact through responsible AI.
Mupita joins a high-profile roster of more than 40 founding members drawn from government, business and international organisations, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Microsoft President Brad Smith, and Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark. Also on the list are the presidents of Estonia and Iceland, African Union infrastructure commissioner Lerato Mataboge, and senior policymakers from Nigeria, Namibia, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. Notably absent from the founding lineup are OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta.
The Commission is co-chaired by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Salesforce Chair and CEO Marc Benioff, with ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin serving as vice-chair.
Mupita’s Reaction
“It’s an honour to be one of the founding commissioners of the AI for Good Global Commission,” said Mupita. “At MTN Group we believe that the developments in AI have the potential to advance health, education, food security and industrial productivity. AI must be safe, ethical and globally inclusive. These perspectives align fully with the work of this Global Commission.”
The Commission builds on the foundation of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, which helped shape global priorities for connectivity and digital inclusion. A central focus going forward will be bridging the digital divide — an estimated 2.2 billion people worldwide remain offline, a challenge that sits squarely within MTN’s footprint across African markets, where fewer than 30 percent of people currently have internet access.
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Inaugural Meeting in Geneva
The Commission’s first meeting takes place this week during the ITU’s AI for Good Global Summit (7–10 July) in Geneva, part of a broader Digital Week that also includes the first UN-mandated Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the WSIS Forum 2026.
Aligned With MTN’s AI Ambitions
The appointment dovetails with MTN Group’s own strategic push to “leverage AI for growth” under its Ambition 2030 strategy, targeting R30 billion in value-creation opportunities over the next three to five years — roughly half from using AI to run the business more efficiently, with the remainder split between consumer and business-facing applications.