IHS Towers has published its 2024 Sustainability Report, setting out progress against the four-pillar strategy. The towerco, which owns or manages around nearly 40,000 structures across Africa and Latin America, reports that its Scope 1 and 2 kilowatt-hour emissions intensity fell by 11% year-on-year and by roughly 20% since the baseline year of 2021.
But turning his focus beyond emissions reduction, Sam Darwish, Chairman & CEO, said the company’s solutions “help facilitate digital inclusion” and highlighted 2024’s focus on connecting schools and up-skilling young people.
Project Green passes US$200mn
IHS Towers has channelled US$209.4mn since 2022 into its Project Green since 2022. The cash went largely into hybrid power systems and solar where grid power is poor—an acute issue in several of IHS’s largest African markets, where the company operates more than 30,000 sites. A smaller but symbolically important reforestation scheme saw 7,800 seedlings planted in Brazil’s Amazon region.
Community spend tilts to education
Social investment totalled US$8.2mn, taking IHS’s cumulative outlay since 2017 to US$37mn. Fifty-five per cent of 2024 spend addressed the “education and economic growth” pillar. Flagship projects included:
Equipping ICT centres and digital kiosks that gave more than 2,000 young people in Cameroon and Rwanda
Supporting Nigeria’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme, through which over 100,000 students received basic coding and digital-literacy training;
Working with UNICEF-ITU’s Giga initiative to refine school-tower proximity mapping in Brazil—analysis showed the average Brazilian school is just 0.85 km from an IHS mast, potentially lowering the cost of connectivity roll-outs.
Health and safety indicators also moved in the right direction: recordable injury frequency among direct employees dropped from 0.17 to 0.04 per 200,000 hours worked after the introduction of five new “Life Saving Rules” and nine HSE Principles.
Supplier training and ratings uplift
Governance work centred on supply-chain compliance. IHS required 4,581 supplier employees to complete training linked to its Supplier Code of Conduct and maintained ISO 37001 anti-bribery certification group-wide. Morningstar Sustainalytics upgraded the company’s ESG Risk Rating in March 2025, positioning IHS in the top decile of its global telecom-services universe.
The report lands as IHS continues to reshape its portfolio. The group still controls the largest independent tower footprint in sub-Saharan Africa, but—mirroring a wider trend among publicly listed towercos—it has begun to recycle capital out of smaller markets, divesting its Peruvian sites to SBA and agreeing a sale in Rwanda.
With African grid-power challenges persisting and investors scrutinising energy costs as closely as headline tenancy ratios, Project Green’s next phase will be watched carefully. A 20% cut in emissions intensity over three years is a solid start, but diesel reliance at many of the company’s 30,000-plus African towers remains high. The ability to translate further ESG gains into opex savings—and to document them rigorously—will be key as IHS looks to improve margins and, ultimately, restore some of the equity value lost during 2023-24’s market turbulence.
