Ayoba, MTN’s Instant-Messaging App Reaches 3 Million Users

Against the odds to excel in a world of instant messaging dominated by WhatsApp and Telegram, MTN’s Ayoba, an instant-messaging app powered by the South African telecom vendor, has increased its subscribers’ base to three million monthly active users in Nigeria.

The threshold beams life into MTN’s dream to facilitate digital transformation in all its markets by establishing other tech businesses outside telecom, its primary venture in and outside Africa.

Ayoba came to the limelight in 2020, after it was introduced to the Nigerian market in support of Covid emergencies, following its launch in 2019. The messaging app partnered with MTN, and has seen significant growth in just two years since it was launched.

Chief Digital Officer, MTN Nigeria, Srinivas Rao, said the milestone is a result of partnership with result-oriented minds to drive digital transformation.

“The world is increasingly becoming a fast-paced digital place with new technological advancements driving the constantly changing landscape. This is why at MTN, we are determined to lead digital transformation with easy-to-use connectivity solutions. We work with like-minded strategic partners, who are committed to bridging the digital divide & bring effortless connectivity services to our customer’s fingertips,” he said.

Ayoba gives users the ability to instantly send, receive text and voice messages with any of their contacts whether they are on the app or not.  The function is available to all users on the App regardless of their device type or network service provider. MTN subscribers, however, get 700MB weekly for usage on the app.

Other key features include the most advanced end-to-end encryption – messages in any conversation are fully encoded until they are delivered to the destination, meant for the eyes of the sender & recipient only. Users can also subscribe to channels for locally relevant content across various categories. In addition, the App enables users to play over 120 games and listen to 200+ top local and international playlists via MusicTime.

MTN aims to connect millions of Africans across the world with the Ayoba App, which is available in 22 languages, including English, Pidgin (Nigeria) Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa. So far, the app is operational in Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Afghanistan South Africa and 10 other African countries.

With its lingua franca as bait, Ayoba is poised to win many more users in a short time. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation has an untapped local-language market that has been struggling to cope with the English-based messaging apps.

Another key features driving growth for the messaging app are music and news – provided in a sort of all-in-one way.