Africa’s leading telecom operator, MTN has set a strategy in motion to create a WeChat platform for the African continent.
MTN Group President and CEO, Ralph Mupita was quoted by the Africa Report as saying in an interview “we want to create the WeChat for Africa.”
This move, inspired by the American and Chinese giants of the sector like Apple and WeChat, forms part of MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy to shift and transforming itself into a technological platform.
As part of the strategy, payments and communication will be integrated into its thriving Ayoba platform, which has been specially tailored for African users, as it comes with multiple African languages and more relevant emojis.
The report said MTN hopes to grow its offer into a payments and communication ecosystem that rivals those offered by China’s WeChat, or Apple or Facebook, and other US tech giants.
MTN Ghana CEO, Selorm Adadevoh had earlier announced that the company was working on becoming a full digital operator by 2023. Subsequent to that, he announced during a virtual forum that MTN as group, was on its way to become a platform play as part of its Ambition 2025 strategy.
He explained that, under Ambition 2025, MTN is seeking to make all of its platforms available to different corporate and individual clients to develop and provide services external to MTN.
Selorm Adadevoh said the strategy is driven by the need to create partnerships within the ecosystem for the development of solutions and products that meet the need of a wider range of customers going forward.
“This is very important to us as we seek to ultimately contribute even a bigger way to the growth of the Ghanaian economy,” he said.
Meanwhile, the MTN Group is also expanding its reach on the continent, as it bids for one of Ethiopia’s new telecoms licenses.
It partnered with large Chinese government financiers: the Belt and Road Initiative known as the Silk Road Fund in the Ethiopian license bid.
