“We celebrate this milestone and are pleased that, through ayoba, we are able to provide accessible communications, so that millions of people across our markets can enjoy the benefits of a modern connected life”, says MTN Group Chief Operating Officer, Jens Schulte-Bockum.

ayoba is available globally with a focus on the African continent. Key markets in MTN’s footprint include Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda and The Republic of Congo, giving ayoba a strong footprint across Africa.

ayoba was also in the news recently when it was voted “Top Innovative Technology and Telecom Product of the Year” at the Ghana National Communications Awards in November 2022.

ayoba CEO Burak Akinci said: “It has been an exciting year. Providing the best experience to our users has always been our top priority and we are working very hard to improve our service everyday. It is a pleasure to see that our efforts are well received and appreciated by our users all around Africa.

“This achievement is the result of listening to our users, understanding their needs and working on multiple aspects of our platform to serve them better. We would like to thank our users who never fail to provide feedback and insightful input. “We will continue to develop what is a robust messaging service in ayoba, that continues to offer new functionalities, free music service that has grown to millions of streams, high quality games, a wide range of channels with curated local content, and hundreds of new MicroApps”

Strong engagement,growth in 2022and diversity of content ayoba has shown immense growth across all verticals this year. Leading the charge is the music streaming service, with its focus on localcontentand growth in streams of 174% in 2022. In terms of engagement, our users viewed 225 million cards across 150 channels on a variety of topics led by football updates, tech and entertainment news, food and fashion, rugby and other sports.
Our French language content was led by influencer Muriel Blanche and Adamant Media, with francophone comedy. In 2022, we launched three new Arabic channels providing growth in content for markets like Sudan, covering entrepreneurship, football and other issues.

In December 2022, the year on year growth for messaging was 125% (messages sent), games by 208% (plays) and MicroApps by 322% (sessions). Ayoba users posted a 85 million stories, updating their friends and family on their activities and interests.

“This is a phenomenal endorsement of our ‘Made in Africa for the World’ strategy” continued Akinci. “We believe in the vast potential of African digital talent and do our best to support them, from training to hackathons and accelerator programmes.

2023 will be even more exciting with all the new features and services we plan to introduce to make the ayoba platform the gateway to the digital economy for start- ups across different markets in Africa.

ayoba is an application open to all networks developed as a partnership initiative with MTN. ayoba users receive free daily data in participating markets. The platform is part of MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy, which targets 100 million monthly active users by 2025.

10 reasons to use ayoba:

1. FREE TO USE: ayoba is free to use – including all of our amazing features! You need data to get onto the internet, but if you are on the MTN network in selected countries, you will get free data every day to use the app.

2. CHAT AND CALL NOW: Instantly send and receive text and voice messages, voice notes, as well as voice and video calls with any of your contacts. Please note that Voice and Video call are subject to standard data charges for all users.

3. SECURE: End-to-end encryption means that messages in a conversation cannot be read by anyone else.

4. FIND YOUR FRIENDS: Use your existing address book to quickly and easily connect with your contacts.

5. CHAT WITH EVERYONE: Send SMS text messages to anyone in your contact list, regardless of whether they've installed ayoba or not. If the friend you send to does not have the app, the message will be delivered by SMS. They can respond by SMS and it will come back into your app. This is a unique technology.

6. GROUP CHAT: The more the merrier! Set up group chats to easily communicate with friends and family in a single chat.

7. SHARING IS CARING: Share videos, images, audio, and other files with your contacts.

8. LET’S MEET: Share your real-time location with your ayoba contacts.

9. CHANNELS: Free access to consume all content across various categories ranging from news, sports, fashion, music, education to entertainment and much more, all within the ayoba app. All of our channels are Africa centric – such as the Black Star channel for Ghana, Scrolla Africa in IsiZulu, Yoruba & Hausa, Pulse Channels for Nigeria and Ghana covering business news, current affairs and entertainment; with over 20 artist channels highlighting African musicians.

10. LISTEN AND PLAY: Our free music service allows users to listen to trending songs in our fantastic playlists, featuring the best of local and international music. We have games that you can play as well, such as Subway Surfers, CR7 Strike, Car Rush Spore Hunter, BattleShip, Pinball, Solitaire and more. New content is added every day.

Ayoba CEO - Burak Akinic