South African made mobile social network Mxit has started using the world’s first ever black emoticons, ‘Oju’.

Mxit is one of South Africa’s biggest social networks with 4.9 million active users in the country.

However, Mxit is rapidly losing market share in South Africa to Facebook and WhatsApp, which each respectively had 9.4 million and 10 million users in the country last year, according to World Wide Worx supported research.

To achieve greater user adoption, Mxit is targeting big developing markets such as India, Indonesia and Nigeria.

But even in Nigeria, Mxit would have out-compete another South African made instant messaging service called 2go. Cape Town headquartered 2go is Nigeria’s biggest social network with over 13 million users, according to strategy and communications consulting firm ‘africapractice’.

Mxit’s move then to use black emoticons could be the first in a series of bids to steal market share in countries such as Nigeria.

“Oju literally meaning ‘faces’ in the Yoruba language in Nigeria where the full range of OJU Afro Emoticons were revealed at the global launch for the brand in April 2014,” says a joint Mxit and Oju press statement.

“Now, just three months after Oju was introduced to the world, it has partnered with Mxit,” says the social network.

Oju was established to better represent Africans in the technology space, according to a description on its website.

Apart from being available on Mxit, the Oju emoticon app is also on the Google Play Store for Android devices.

“At oju we have identified a need, we Africans need a voice in today’s modern world, a voice that represents us in the computer driven present and future,” says Oju on its website.

“An African voice that not only understands the African way, but supports all our diverse cultures and bring to life all our emotions, passions and our warmth as a continent in a proudly African way,” notes the Oju site.

Oju’s move to launch black emoticons comes as Africa’s mobile phone space, in particular, is booming.

Global mobile phone industry body, the GSMA, says Africa is the world’s fastest growing market in this regard.

“By mid-2013, there were 253 million unique mobile subscribers and 502 million connections,” said the GSMA in a report released last year on the African market.