ayoba is pleased to share the achievement of a significant milestone with the super-app reaching 35 million monthly active users across the African continent in December 2023. This growth is attributed to the heightened retention rates and organic adoption, fuelled by an enhanced user experience in the communication suite and a robust content offering that includes music, channels, games, and services. The expansion has been further propelled by the inclusion of users from new territories such as Kenya, Egypt, Mali, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Botswana.

Selorm Adadevoh, MTN Group Chief Commercial Officer shares, “Empowering connections, fostering innovation, and charting the course for a digital future, ayoba is more than an app – it’s a transformative journey. Like the continent itself, ayoba has been resilient, dynamic, and forward-thinking. As we reflect on the milestones of 2023, it’s clear that our dedication to innovation and user-centricity has propelled ayoba to new heights. With gratitude for the past and a vision for the future, we embarked on 2024 with a steadfast commitment to continuing to evolve ayoba delivering enriched experiences for its growing user base in Africa. Our focus remains unwavering on empowering communities, driving innovation, and building a sustainable ecosystem for long-term growth, ayoba is not just an app; it’s a testament to the power of connectivity.“

ayoba saw strong growth in 2023 in many areas of the service. Usage of Music continued to increase via ayoba’s popular playlist service* in collaboration with Boomplay, which ended the year in excess of 600 million streams.  Amongst many other growth drivers were improvements in the messaging vertical and popularity of the new ‘Explore’ landing page.

Looking ahead to 2024, Burak Akinci, ayoba’s CEO, expresses optimism, saying “We are very proud of our achievements in 2023, and we have a lot to look forward to in the coming year. We begin the year with a strong offering for Football fans including multiple daily news updates, games, themed playlists to name a few.  As we move into the year, our product and content teams have many updates coming across Messaging and Groups, User Stories, Music, Games and more. Our focus in 2024 will extend to the B2B front, introducing features to benefit our partners and leverage our growing ecosystem and traffic.“

In 2023, ayoba successfully launched content marketing attracting partnerships with top brands such as Cadbury’s, Chappies. The year ahead will see a heightened focus on expanding partnerships with known brands, as new Ad Sales options are introduced to capitalise on the growing user base and engagement.

On the content front, ayoba has secured new high-profile partners, from international NGOs to the localised Dycoco offering, adding more French comedy to the highly popular Adamant Media series on the platform. In plans for 2024, includes the introduction of more podcasts, playlists, education, sports news, lifestyle updates and uplifting with a focus on short-form video.

ayoba is set to launch an updated range of services, including a communications API, new payment partners and improvements to its partner portal. The newly launched ‘Discover’ Page in the Services vertical offers new traffic drivers for partners, as well as a curated services offering.

Messaging has always been a core focus for ayoba. Following on the successful re-engineering of the messaging module in 2023 which included a design and features refresh; ayoba will turn its attention to commercial features in 2024.  This includes the introduction of business accounts with related support and a suite of business-oriented features.

*in partnership with Boomplay