Ayoba CEO, Burak Akinci.

MTN Group backed African super app Ayoba has surpassed 25 million monthly active users’ mark as it celebrates its fourth anniversary.

Ayoba, an MTN-owned instant messaging super app, was launched in 2019 and features peer-to-peer private messaging, which is end-to-end encrypted.

The platform offer users free access to an ecosystem of digital and media services through chat and call features, channels, micro-apps, and payment solutions.

Ayoba platform is part of MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy, which targets 100 million monthly active users by 2025.

Today, MTN announced the super App has reached a new milestone of surpassing25 million monthly active users’ mark up from 20 million monthly active users in December 2022.

The platform, MTN says, is available globally but has a strong a focus on the African continent.

Among key territories are Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda and The Republic of Congo.

Ayoba CEO Burak Akinci, comments: “25 million is a significant milestone to pass on our fourth birthday. Our journey has been transformative, and the positive response from our users fuels our drive for innovation. Our users are at the heart of our progress, and we are grateful for their support.”

In a statement, MTN says, so far in 2023, ayoba has focused on enhancing communication and content features.

These, the telco says, have been well received, with a 35% increase in messages, and a 16% increase in both stories and VoIP calls.

“Users have viewed 88 million cards across all channels, in topics such as entertainment, education, food, fashion and more,” says the company.

Akinci explains further: "The first four months of 2023 was a period of significant growth and development for ayoba. We have improved our socialisation and messaging functionalities, enhanced our microapp experience and added many more features.”

Further, the company notes the introduction of the new ‘explore’ landing page marks a significant advance for the ayoba’s Android version.

It says: “This page, currently in pilot phase, will be rolled out to all key territories in the future. It brings a simplified design for easy navigation through ayoba’s curated high-quality content and highlights our themes to our users.”