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MTN Group today announced that its instant messaging platform, ayoba has reached 1 million monthly active users. ayoba is an advanced communications application localised for African and Middle East consumer needs, under an independent Over the Top (OTT) brand with unique features for MTN customers. The app supports many local languages spoken across the MTN markets including isiZulu, isiXhosa, Pidgin, Yoruba, Swahili, Hausa, French and English.

MTN, together with its partners, is driven to improve access to affordable communications to ensure that people in its markets can reap the social, economic and developmental dividends of being online. ayoba underscores this goal to bring more people into the digital world by providing them with affordable and simplified digital communication services.

Commenting on the milestone, MTN Group President and CEO, Rob Shuter said, “We believe that our customers in Africa and the Middle East deserve a communication platform that expresses our unique voice, honours our rich identity through local languages, and addresses our customers’ specific needs and challenges by offering a data-included offering for MTN users, Mobile Money transfers (coming soon) and locally relevant content via channels.”

The platform which was launched earlier this year is now operational in 8 MTN markets, namely: Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Congo Brazzaville, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Afghanistan and South Africa. ayoba is also available across multiple markets on the Google Play Store and via the ayoba website www.ayoba.me as an OTT offering.

As part of continuous efforts to enhance its offerings, ayoba will be adding more features in the future. “ayoba is also working on building an open digital platform that will enable third-party innovation. This will ensure that we offer a rich diversified experience on the platform, enabling us to deliver more value to our users, empower local developers and create local experiences that are optimised for local communities,” explains David Gilarranz, CEO MTN Digital.

Some of ayoba’s key features and offerings are:

Gilarranz adds that in addition to the number of exciting innovations on the cards, ayoba plans to expand to the rest of MTN’s markets, and other territories across the globe. Before the end of the year, ayoba will go live in Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Benin and Rwanda.

MTN Group today announces the appointment of Yolanda Cuba as Group Chief Digital and Fintech Officer. Yolanda will join the MTN Group Executive Committee reporting to the Group CEO Rob Shuter. In this role Yolanda will lead the Group’s strategic expansion of its financial services and digital solutions efforts and transformation into a digital operator.

Yolanda brings extensive telecommunications and leadership experience to MTN Group. She joins MTN Group from Vodacom, where she served as Chief Officer of Strategy and M&A. She was previously the CEO of Vodafone Ghana for a three-year period, a role that saw her named Telecom CEO of the Year in 2018.

“This role gives me the opportunity to drive digital innovation and financial inclusion across the Group’s vast footprint. I’m really looking forward to the new challenge and being part of the MTN leadership team”, said Yolanda.

Rob Shuter said, “We are very pleased to bring an executive of Yolanda’s calibre into MTN Group. Yolanda is a highly qualified and experienced executive, with a unique combination of operational telecommunications experience as well as finance, financial services and digital skills. I am confident that Yolanda’s leadership will place us in good stead as we intensify our efforts to build a digital ecosystem and scale our fintech offering across our markets”.

Under Yolanda’s leadership, MTN will continue to progressively grow the fintech and digital opportunities in Africa as we see these areas as major drivers of our BRIGHT growth strategy. Yolanda’s start date will be communicated in due course.