JOHANNESBURG: MTN Group plans to raise more than $1.05 billion (15 billion rand) in asset sales over the next three years, Africa’s biggest telecoms group said on Thursday after reporting a massive jump in 2018 profit. MTN is in the middle of reviewing its presence in some markets alongside investments in e-commerce platforms as part of a plan to streamline the company into a focused operator in high-growth markets in the Middle East and Africa. As part of the review, the company has agreed to sell its minority stake in Botswana’s Mascom for $300 million. It sold its sole European unit in Cyprus last year. MTN also said its investments in tower companies and e-commerce platforms such as African online retailer Jumia were valued at 40 billion rand, and would be sold over time as they were not long-term strategic assets. “The group has committed to the portfolio review realizing more than 15 billion rand over the next three years excluding any proceeds from its 23-billion-rand position in IHS,” the company said. IHS is a builder of cell phone towers. Headline EPS, the primary measure of profit that strips out certain one-off items, surged 85 percent to 337 cents in the year ended December. The bottom line is still not even half what MTN reported in 2015, a year before it agreed to pay a $1.7 billion fine in Nigeria for missing a deadline to cut off unregistered SIM card users.