Ayoba and Moya Messenger offer new partnership opportunities for operators in Sub-Saharan Africa
"Ayoba and Moya Messenger are offering data-free messaging in order to build market share while they develop an ecosystem of third-party service providers."
The OTT communication market in Africa is mature. Almost all smartphone users use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to chat with and call friends and family, leaving only a limited potential for other services to grow out of their niches. However, Facebook has not yet developed any features that are specifically tailored to local needs nor has it expanded into adjacent digital services. In this article, we analyse the rise of two OTT communication apps in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Ayoba by MTN and Moya Messenger by biNu. Both apps are using a similar method to quickly grow their user bases and are building a product proposition that aggregates local content and hosts services that are tailored to local needs.