16
Mar, 2026

Orange targets 75 million users for Max It super app as Africa growth accelerates

Orange Group Middle East and Africa CEO Yasser Shaker said he is aiming to triple the number of users of the Max It super app to 75 million as part of a broader strategy to sustain growth across the operator’s African footprint.

Speaking at Mobile World Congress Barcelona, Shaker said the app currently has around 25 million users and integrates services including mobile finance, streaming, gaming and telecom offerings.

Shaker said the push to expand Max It forms part of the wider group’s “Trust the Future” strategy, which identifies innovation as a key pillar for growth.

The company aims to reach 75 million users by the end of 2028, a goal Shaker described as deliberately ambitious to drive internal momentum.

“A super app means people can go there for everything – marketplace, TV streaming, gaming and payments,” he said, adding that Orange Money currently acts as the main payment platform within the app.

Growth beyond connectivity

Shaker said Orange’s Middle East and Africa business is expanding across multiple segments rather than relying solely on traditional connectivity services.

Data and connectivity remain the core growth engine, with revenue in this segment increasing by around 18%. Mobile financial services are also growing rapidly, with Orange Money recording roughly 18% growth over the past year.

The platform processes around €20 billion in transfers every month and has a customer base of approximately 47 million users, highlighting the increasing role of financial services within telecom ecosystems.

Enterprise services are also gaining traction. Although still relatively small, Orange’s ICT business is expanding quickly, while the wider B2B segment is growing by about 10%.

Overall, the Middle East and Africa division delivered its strongest performance yet in 2025, with revenue rising more than 12% and EBITDA increasing by nearly 14%, bringing margins close to 40%.

Africa’s demographic advantage

Shaker emphasised that Africa’s demographic and economic dynamics continue to make it one of the most promising regions for telecom growth.

The continent has a population exceeding 1.5 billion people and one of the youngest demographics globally, with an average age of around 20. Combined with steady population growth and a mobile-first culture, this creates strong demand for digital services.

Orange currently operates in 18 markets across Africa and the Middle East, with a deliberately diversified footprint. No single country accounts for more than 10% of the regional business, a structure Shaker said helps mitigate geopolitical and currency risks.

AI and digital skills

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasing role in the operator’s strategy, particularly in network management and customer analytics. In Africa’s largely prepaid markets, operators must analyse customer behaviour in real time as users can easily switch between providers.

AI is also helping accelerate the development of platforms such as Max It, enabling faster software design and updates.

Shaker added that localisation will be important for digital services in Africa due to the continent’s linguistic diversity and varying literacy levels. The company is experimenting with AI tools that support local languages to improve accessibility.

Alongside commercial initiatives, Orange is investing in digital education through its network of Orange Digital Centres, which have trained more than 1.3 million people. The company is also partnering with universities and technology firms to deliver free training programmes.

5G and connectivity expansion

Orange is continuing to expand 5G coverage across the region, with deployments underway in several markets including Egypt, Morocco, Botswana, Senegal and Tunisia.

In many cases, the technology is being used to support fixed wireless access services, providing broadband connectivity in areas where fibre networks are limited.

Shaker said fibre remains focused on dense urban areas, while 5G offers a more practical solution for expanding broadband coverage in less populated regions.

The operator competes with major regional players including MTN Group, Airtel Africa and Vodacom across many markets.

Despite growing competition from fintech companies and neobanks, Shaker said Orange remains confident in its position provided that all players operate under the same regulatory conditions.

16
Mar, 2026

Indosat and Safaricom pool AI and fintech chops for better CX

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Safaricom revealed on Friday they have signed an agreement to combine their collective experience in AI and fintech to co-develop better customer experiences within their respective digital ecosystems.

The partnership deal will see Indosat and Safaricom develop practical use cases that leverage AI-driven decision-making to enable proactive and hyper-personalized customer engagement.

That includes things like predictive care that spots and resolves network issues before they impact customers, relevant product recommendations for prepaid users, and conversational AI experiences for customer support.

Meanwhile, Indosat will tap into Safaricom’s deep operational expertise in mobile financial services with its M-Pesa service to strengthen resilience, security and personalization of digital financial services.

That aspect will focus on areas like AI-powered fraud and risk management, improving payment reliability during peak moments, expanding merchant and ecosystem capabilities, and enabling more tailored financial offerings based on customer behaviour.

“By combining Indosat’s AI-Native ambitions with Safaricom’s proven fintech and ecosystem expertise, we are focused on delivering innovations that customers can genuinely feel from smarter networks and safer digital transactions to more personal and intuitive experiences,” said Indosat’s president director and CEO Vikram Sinha.

“From smarter networks and safer transactions to more intuitive digital experiences, this collaboration goes beyond innovation; it is about shaping inclusive digital economies where individuals, businesses, and communities can thrive,” said Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa.

Indosat and Safaricom said they will also explore smart-capex models and AI-led insights to sharpen how both telcos plan and invest in their networks so that network investments are more precise, demand-driven and impactful – particularly in high-growth and underserved areas.

The partnership agreement also includes a skillsets component, with both telcos committing to establish joint initiatives that focus on “building AI-fluent executives, developing business–AI translator roles, and enabling cross-organizational learning journeys and short-term secondments to accelerate capability transfer and institutional learning.”

13
Mar, 2026

World Bank initiative aims to boost digital economy in three African countries

The World Bank Group (WBG) Board of Directors earlier this week approved what is described as a transformative regional initiative that will directly boost job creation in Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It includes a strong focus on digital infrastructure.

This second operation under the Western Africa Regional Digital Integration Programme (WARDIP), totalling US$137 million, aims to strengthen the foundations for a dynamic digital economy through expanding and upgrading the digital infrastructure needed for competitiveness, fostering a more business‑friendly environment, and enabling businesses to scale and operate across regional markets.

WBG says that WARDIP2, as the initiative is known, will increase broadband access, financing and usage in participating countries and enable an environment for cross-border digital services in Western Africa.

It is claimed that approximately 5.2 million people will be connected to new or enhanced broadband internet across the three countries, and 5.4 million new users will access digitally enabled services.

Michel Rogy, World Bank Digital and AI Regional Practice Director explains thar the initiative “addresses one of the region’s most persistent challenges: high-cost and unreliable connectivity that limit competitiveness and people’s access to digital opportunities”.

Through major investments in digital infrastructure, says WBG, the project will expand resilient broadband networks, increase international connectivity, and strengthen data centre capacity, laying the groundwork for new digital jobs and improved public and private sector service delivery.

At the same time, it will invest in people by supporting digital skills training for 9,000 individuals, including women and youth, and expanding opportunities in AI, cybersecurity and entrepreneurship.

In addition, says Marina Wes, Acting World Bank Regional Integration Director for Africa: “By harmonising regulations, modernising digital governance, and improving competition across regional markets, WARDIP2 creates a more predictable and investment-friendly environment. » She adds: « Its support to the West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), regulatory reforms in participating countries, and measures that lower deployment costs while expanding access to affordable, high‑quality connectivity are critical to deepening regional integration, unlocking private capital and creating jobs.”

To help businesses scale, WARDIP2 will strengthen digital entrepreneurship ecosystems, expand digital financial services, and support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups with seed financing, market access and cross‑border digital trade opportunities.

WARDIP was launched in November 2023 to expand internet access and to promote a single digital market in West Africa. It’s first operation is supporting The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, and Mauritania.

The most « AI-powered » MWC of all time

The curtain has closed on another Mobile World Congress Barcelona, where more than 100,000 people wandered through eight cavernous halls, collectively racking up enough steps to climb a small mountain – or at least justify an extra tapas or two after a long day.

From a newsroom perspective, the telecoms industry only truly wakes up once MWC Barcelona gets underway. It is where partnerships are announced, strategies are unveiled and executives test the messaging that will shape the industry narrative for the rest of the year.

At the 20th edition of the event, one theme continued to dominate: artificial intelligence. The AI hype train shows no signs of slowing down. Antennas are AI-powered, networks are AI-powered, software is AI-powered – and every other stand seemed to feature a partnership with Nvidia.

That said, it still feels as though telecoms has not quite reached the point where AI has fundamentally transformed the industry. The sense I took from many conversations across the week is that the change will be gradual rather than explosive. If this is a revolution, it is likely to be a slow one.

Nvidia’s approach illustrates this well. Rather than building telecom solutions directly, the company is positioning itself as an enabler – providing the computing platforms and software foundations for vendors and operators to develop their own AI-driven use cases, whether in network optimisation, RAN development or automation.

Yet the most interesting part of the show for me was not necessarily the biggest stands or the flashiest demos.

Instead, it was a corner of Hall 4.

For the first time, the event hosted an African Pavilion, bringing together several major operators including MTN Group, Ethio Telecom, Axian Telecom and Cassava Technologies.

In a preview ahead of the show, I suggested that African operators would likely play a more prominent role this year. Seeing them establish a physical presence at the industry’s largest gathering was therefore a welcome development.

More importantly, these operators were clearly there to make their voices heard. The discussions happening around the pavilion were grounded in the realities of emerging markets – affordability, coverage, infrastructure investment and the policy challenges shaping digital development.

This stood in contrast to some of the more theatrical displays elsewhere on the show floor, where vendors appeared locked in what could best be described as “Robot Wars”, each trying to outdo the other with increasingly elaborate machines on their stands. For the record, my unofficial award goes to the booth featuring a sword fighting robot – not strictly telecoms, but undeniably entertaining.

Beyond the spectacle, one of the more substantive conversations centred on the role of satellites in connecting underserved markets.

At a roundtable hosted by the GSMA, executives from Axiata Group, MTN Group and Ooredoo called for governments to introduce clearer and stricter regulatory frameworks for low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite providers such as Starlink and Amazon.

The appeal of LEO satellites for emerging markets is obvious. In many cases, deploying terrestrial infrastructure is both expensive and time-consuming. Satellite connectivity offers the possibility of expanding coverage far more quickly.

From the perspective of mobile operators, however, this creates a complicated competitive dynamic. They argue – not unreasonably – that they are subject to licensing fees, regulatory obligations and infrastructure investment requirements that satellite players may not face in the same way.

And ultimately, the average consumer does not particularly care about the delivery mechanism. Whether connectivity comes from a terrestrial network or a satellite constellation is largely irrelevant to someone who simply wants reliable internet access.

That tension between innovation, competition and regulation is likely to become an increasingly important issue over the coming years, particularly as Amazon ramps up its own LEO ambitions.

Another topic that repeatedly came up in conversations during the week was device affordability.

While global smartphone markets have largely recovered from the worst of the supply-chain disruptions seen in recent years, affordability remains a major barrier to connectivity in many developing regions. For millions of people, even relatively inexpensive smartphones remain out of reach.

In response, the GSMA and several operators participating in the African Pavilion announced a new initiative to introduce a US$40 entry-level 4G smartphone. The devices are expected to launch across six markets later this year, aiming to make mobile internet access more accessible to first-time users.

It is a reminder that while much of the industry conversation revolves around AI, automation and advanced network architectures, basic connectivity challenges remain central to telecom development in many parts of the world.

Looking ahead, 2026 is shaping up to be another fascinating year for the sector. The continued evolution of AI, the growing influence of satellite connectivity and the push to expand affordable access will all play important roles in shaping the next phase of telecoms growth.

And if nothing else, the industry has once again proven that it can combine serious strategic discussions with the occasional robot sword fight. Telecoms, after all, is nothing if not versatile.

13
Mar, 2026

Have Modern UC Deployments Failed to Account for Frontline Workers?

Have Modern UC Deployments Failed to Account for Frontline Workers?

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Nick Muir, General Manager for EMEA at Spectralink.

When companies calculate the ROI of modern unified communications (UC) deployments such as Microsoft Teams, they typically focus on white-collar workers who spend a lot of time at a keyboard or in meetings. Yet, around 80% of the global workforce is made up of frontline workers[1] — key employees such as nurses, factory workers, retail associates, and facilities staff, who rarely sit at desks. Too often, where the formal office environment ends, so does … [visit site to read more]

12
Mar, 2026

Strategic partnership promises easier access to advanced satellite technology

Satcoms company ST Engineering iDirect, has announced a strategic partnership with Q-KON, a premier African satellite engineering and service provider, to launch an initiative called Intuition Unbound across Africa.

This collaboration, say the partners, will significantly lower barriers to entry for Q-KON and its customers, enabling businesses and organisations of all sizes to access premium satellite ground technology while accelerating time to market.

Q-KON will provide satellite capacity and teleport facilities in South Africa, while ST Engineering iDirect will deliver Intuition Unbound’s flexible, scalable and secure satellite ground connectivity.

This model, it is claimed, will foster a more competitive market landscape and establish a strong foundation for new service providers and enterprises to join the ecosystem and build differentiated value-added services.

Intuition Unbound leverages scalable infrastructure, advanced virtual network operator (VNO) capabilities, and global bandwidth management technologies to redefine how connectivity is accessed and delivered. Built on an as-a-service model, Intuition Unbound delivers flexible, scalable, and secure satellite ground connectivity without the heavy upfront capex commitments traditionally required.

Through the partnership with Q-KON, ST Engineering iDirect says it will provide predictable and transparent pricing and deliver SLA-backed performance with enterprise-grade compliance and security.

Dr Dawie de Wet, Group CEO of Q-KON calls the partnership “a game-changer for our customers” that “maps a way forward to deliver sustainable, competitive GEO satellite services”.

Brian Jakins, SVP Global Sales at ST Engineering iDirect, adds: “By making advanced satellite technology accessible to smaller providers and emerging-market customers, we are unlocking innovation and growth where connectivity is essential. Our partnership with Q-KON represents a major step toward making premium satellite ground networks accessible to all.”

Together with Q-KON, ST Engineering iDirect is expected to commence deployment of Intuition Unbound across Africa by mid-2026. ST Engineering iDirect plans to expand Intuition Unbound into additional regions globally, extending the benefits of flexible, scalable, and secured satellite ground connectivity worldwide.

XLSMART positions inclusion and partnerships at the heart of its growth strategy

Arsjad Rasjid, President Commissioner of recently-merged Indonesian operator XLSMART, talks to Developing Telecoms about his role in the business, digital transformation and the opportunities and challenges of integrating two major network provider businesses, the experience of working with technology partner ZTE, and XLSMART goal to become Indonesia’s “most loved” company.

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