Africa’s Super App ayoba has announced it has reached the milestone of 20 million monthly active users. This represents a growth of 100% compared to the 10 million monthly active users recorded at the same time last year.
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.
MTN Group Chief Operating Officer, Jens Schulte-Bockum said, “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.”
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 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 every day. 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”
ayoba has shown immense growth across all verticals this year. Leading the charge is the music streaming service, with its focus on local content and 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.
Its French-language content was led by influencer Muriel Blanche and Adamant Media, with francophone comedy. In 2022, the Super App 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 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.
