If IHS Towers goes ahead with an IPO, MTN will sell its 29 per cent stake for around ZAR27 billion ($2.3 billion) as the operator looks to cut debt, Bloomberg reported.

IHS Towers is Africa’s largest telecommunication towers company and news of it planning an IPO first surfaced in 2017.

MTN’s CFO Ralph Mupita told Bloomberg that if the valuation is appropriate, the operator will sell its stake.

“It is not strategic to lock up so much capital,” he explained, adding MTN plans to cut its debts. Its borrowings rose from ZAR52 billion in 2016 to ZAR57 billion in 2017.

IHS Towers is owned by French investment company Wendel, Goldman Sachs and MTN. The company is one of three major African tower companies looking into an IPO in 2018, the other two being Eaton Towers and Helios Towers.

In a stock market statement issued in January ahead of the release of its annual results, MTN said its earnings in 2017 will improve due to the resolution of problems in Nigeria which caused it to post a net loss of ZAR3.1 billion in 2016.