South African soccer publication giant Soccer Laduma has the first verified WeChat official account in Africa.

WeChat is an instant messaging application owned by Chinese firm Tencent. The instant messaging service, which competes against the likes of popular offerings such as WhatsApp, has 300 million users worldwide.

And in a bid to attract more African users to its service, WeChat says Soccer Laduma has a verified account on its service that allows the football publication to send out daily broadcast messages to its followers highlighting the best news and content of the day.

Furthermore, the dedicated account enables Laduma to also send regular audio messages from the editorial team and South African soccer legends.

WeChat users in Africa can also access the content by sending keywords to the Soccer Laduma Official Account to receive text, audio, video or rich media content within WeChat.

“It is great to empower fans with a multifunctional engagement tool such as WeChat; we feel it will prove instrumental in identifying what kind of content our readers enjoy most,” says Soccer Laduma’s sales and marketing director, Brendon Radomsky.

According to a statement, Soccer Laduma has been using the WeChat technology for two months.

“The growth of this official account highlights the strength that WeChat as a social communication app has amongst African smartphone users. It also portrays how brands can harness this power and use it to engage with consumers in a new and exciting way,” says new business manager for WeChat Africa, Ronald Bach.