Kedar Gupte at Bayobab Group says the time is ripe for new communications tools to deliver for Africa's young population.
The continent of Africa is ripe for a huge acceleration in digital growth in the coming decades. As an enormous region of diverse cultures and a rapidly expanding population, there’s a growing appetite for connectivity to support people in all walks of life.
Given the median age of just 19, making Africa the region with the world’s youngest population, digital services are in major demand to help people gain access not only to all types of entertainment, but also financial and commercial services that can support them more effectively as they carve out a pathway through their adult lives and careers. That makes now a key time to ensure that people on the continent have the tools to make the most of these opportunities.
“You see a whole lot more people becoming digitally aware and data savvy in Africa, and we see that the young African today needs the ability to be reached through new platforms,” says Kedar Gupte, chief mobility business officer at Bayobab Group.
When it comes to mobile voice, chat and communications via new messaging platforms and roaming ecosystems, as well as up-and-coming applications in areas such as IoT, it is therefore crucial that effective services are delivered on these fronts to Africa’s 54 countries.
Set for scale
Gupte paints a picture of just how sizeable a task that is, pointing to the sheer scale of the continent, which covers 30 million square kilometres.
“India, where I come from and which is the seventh-largest country in the world, would fit nine times into Africa,” he says. But Bayobab and its parent MTN are putting all their efforts into rising to the challenge.
“At a mothership level, MTN’s mission is that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life,” says Gupte. “That’s a massive responsibility that starts with establishing connectivity, then ensuring you put the right applications on top so that people can speak using voice, communicate using messaging, and benefit from international roaming ecosystems and APIs.”
He also points out that aside from being relevant, the services need to be affordable in a region that has a “mobile-first” economy where people often might have a single Android phone rather than a separate MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone. “The wallet power of the average African is much lower than what it is in Europe and North America, but that doesn’t mean the ambition level is any lower,” says Gupte. “As an analogy, I need to figure out how to put out a Rolls-Royce from my factory, but at the cost of a Fiat.”
Through Bayobab’s assets, reach and economies of scale, alongside collaboration with other industry players and regulators, he believes this is achievable.
Bayobab’s recent financial results have shown the kind of potential that Africa has, with the company achieving external revenue growth of 5.4% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2023 to US$266 million. This growth has come in tandem with mobile activities including messaging deals, expansion of application-to-person SMS messaging, partnerships with key global networks and the launch of thousands of roaming services – expanding the company’s global footprint while making roaming more affordable for MTN subscribers in Africa.
Getting the message
Among the messaging deals moving things forward in the new digital age, Bayobab announced in late October that it was set to become a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider – making it the first telecoms provider in Africa to secure this arrangement.
Through the deal, the company will act as a third-party provider with expertise on the WhatsApp Business platform, helping empower SMEs and digital enterprises to harness the service through conversational messaging, and support MTN’s own subscribers. Furthermore, Bayobab will support businesses in harnessing the benefits of Meta’s WhatsApp cloud API.
“As people become more digitally aware, there are certain services today lapped up by subscribers in mature markets that are becoming very relevant for emerging markets,” says Gupte.
Those types of moves help expand and solidify the communications ecosystem, he adds. “Through their conversations using such platforms, our wholesale customers can meet and establish a deeper connection with other service providers, as well as big and small enterprises,” says Gupte. “That’s really at the root of what we’re trying to do.”
Putting down roots
Indeed, ‘root’ is the operative word for Bayobab’s business, following its rebrand from MTN GlobalConnect last year in reference to Africa’s life-giving and sustaining baobab tree. As part of this, the company is emphasising the concept of openness and carrier-neutrality, involving working with the rest of the industry in a way that benefits the whole ecosystem.
As Gupte explains, that approach means the company is not only servicing its own 290 million mobile subscribers, but also hundreds of millions more served by other MNOs and digital subscribers on its wholesale network.
Furthermore, the strategy chimes with the API marketplace that Bayobab has been opening up to help service providers offer more contextual and relevant mobile communications, and the industry to responsibly share data. MTN launched its cross-industry API platform, Chenosis, over three years ago, with the aim of developing the largest library of open APIs in Africa and tapping into a wide array of areas from a single place, from telecommunications to e-health, e-government, IoT, fintech, e-commerce, identity and authentication, payments and location-based services.
Gupte talks of the likes of APIs that enable SIM-swap checks, and that allow communication using SMS and voice. “When we’re provisioning our customers, they’re sitting on a lot of good data,” he adds. “With a lot of responsibility, we want to use this data so the lives of those we serve become better and the lives of enterprises that want to make relevant offerings are enriched.”
Bayobab is also seeking to pave the way for IoT when that really takes off in Africa, with the company playing a part in launching sustainable use cases in areas including logistics, transport, healthcare and education. “All our customers now understand the advantages of IoT and how devices can be used to enrich lives in Africa,” says Gupte. “This area is still relatively raw in the region, but probably five years from now, it will be very relevant when there is adequate connectivity. We need to have reached maturity in this area by the time this picks up speed.”
Working together
With Africa’s vastly varying regulatory environments in different countries, close cooperation with regulators and regional bodies is needed to ensure effective cross-border connectivity in these different areas of communication, says Gupte. “The only way to do this all well is to closely collaborate with stakeholders in the value chain,” he says.
Regulators like ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) help, as a group of countries tasked with ensuring that the benefits of communications flow into economies, says Gupte.
As challenges are tackled effectively, he thinks Africa has almost limitless potential for harnessing new forms of mobile communication going forward. He points out how the region has already led the way as a “hotbed” for innovation in areas such as mobile money and banking.
As for Bayobab, making the most of this burgeoning market in the coming years and decades means solidifying in traditional lines of business while building a strong position when it comes to new, up-and-coming ones. “The growth potential is exponential,” says Gupte. “We have a real chance to seize on that so long as we keep driving forward with our heads down and with a sharp focus.”
To read the full special report on Bayobab's commitment to Connecting Africa, please click here.
