MTN Ghana chief executive Stephen Blewett has predicted that artificial intelligence assistants will gradually displace mobile applications, signalling what he described as the next major inflection point in how Ghanaians interact with digital services.

Blewett made the prediction at MTN House in Accra during the company’s 30th anniversary celebration, framing artificial intelligence (AI) as the successor to the app era in the same way mobile money succeeded voice calls. He said future devices would rely less on individual applications and more on intelligent digital systems capable of managing tasks through context and conversation, stripping away layers of complexity from everyday usage.

He said MTN Ghana was already preparing for that transition by strengthening fibre infrastructure, modernising core systems, and enabling the advanced technologies that would underpin the shift.

The prediction anchored a broader address that traced Ghana’s telecommunications journey from 1996, when limited Global System for Mobile (GSM) services connected a small fraction of the population. Blewett recalled iconic early devices such as the Nokia 3210 and the Motorola Razr and the period when text messaging was the defining feature of mobile communication, before walking through the data revolution and the 2009 introduction of mobile money as the moments that progressively widened who could participate in Ghana’s economy.

He described mobile money not as a product launch but as a structural change, one that extended formal financial access to millions of Ghanaians who had previously operated outside that system. Today, he said, the service runs through household budgets, small business operations, and national supply chains as standard economic infrastructure.

Looking further ahead, Blewett said sustainability would shape how MTN deploys its planned US$1.1 billion investment over the next three years, with renewable energy adoption and responsible data practices forming the backbone of long-term network resilience. He confirmed plans to expand coverage, close rural gaps, and build new sites as part of that commitment.

He also acknowledged that no infrastructure figure captures MTN’s actual meaning to ordinary Ghanaians. He shared the story of a farmer who boarded an MTN sales vehicle insisting that as a paying customer, he had a claim on it, describing the incident as evidence that Ghanaians view the network not as a distant provider but as something they helped build.

“As we mark 30 years, the real story is found in people’s lives,” he said.