Against the odds to excel in a world of instant messaging dominated by WhatsApp and Telegram, MTN’s Ayoba, an instant-messaging app powered by the South African telecom vendor, has increased its subscribers’ base to three million monthly active users in Nigeria.

The threshold beams life into MTN’s dream to facilitate digital transformation in all its markets by establishing other tech businesses outside telecom, its primary venture in and outside Africa.

Ayoba came to the limelight in 2020, after it was introduced to the Nigerian market in support of Covid emergencies, following its launch in 2019. The messaging app partnered with MTN, and has seen significant growth in just two years since it was launched.

Chief Digital Officer, MTN Nigeria, Srinivas Rao, said the milestone is a result of partnership with result-oriented minds to drive digital transformation.

“The world is increasingly becoming a fast-paced digital place with new technological advancements driving the constantly changing landscape. This is why at MTN, we are determined to lead digital transformation with easy-to-use connectivity solutions. We work with like-minded strategic partners, who are committed to bridging the digital divide & bring effortless connectivity services to our customer’s fingertips,” he said.

Ayoba gives users the ability to instantly send, receive text and voice messages with any of their contacts whether they are on the app or not.  The function is available to all users on the App regardless of their device type or network service provider. MTN subscribers, however, get 700MB weekly for usage on the app.

Other key features include the most advanced end-to-end encryption – messages in any conversation are fully encoded until they are delivered to the destination, meant for the eyes of the sender & recipient only. Users can also subscribe to channels for locally relevant content across various categories. In addition, the App enables users to play over 120 games and listen to 200+ top local and international playlists via MusicTime.

MTN aims to connect millions of Africans across the world with the Ayoba App, which is available in 22 languages, including English, Pidgin (Nigeria) Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa. So far, the app is operational in Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Afghanistan South Africa and 10 other African countries.

With its lingua franca as bait, Ayoba is poised to win many more users in a short time. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation has an untapped local-language market that has been struggling to cope with the English-based messaging apps.

Another key features driving growth for the messaging app are music and news – provided in a sort of all-in-one way.

As the audiobooks market grows larger, some players in the podcasting space are beginning to find their way into it. Spotify has announced plans to acquire the audiobook services and distribution company Findaway for an undisclosed price.

In 2019, Spotify had announced its ambition to become the world’s leading platform with an expansion into podcasting through the acquisitions of Anchor and Gimlet. Two years later, the company is widening its reach through the Findaway acquisition.

“It’s Spotify’s ambition to be the destination for all things audio both for listeners and creators. The acquisition of Findaway will accelerate Spotify’s presence in the audiobook space and will help us more quickly meet that ambition,” Gustav Soderstrom, the company’s chief research and development officer said.

Findaway operates multiple businesses, including distribution of audiobooks to various platforms and offering audiobook creation services under its business Findaway Voices. The company pairs authors with narrators, which could become a new and valuable source of revenue for Spotify.

“We’re excited to combine Findaway’s team, best-in-class technology platform, and robust audiobook catalog with Spotify’s expertise to revolutionize the audiobook space as we did with music and podcasts,” Soderstrom said.

Besides other benefits, the acquisition will also make Spotify both a commercial bookseller and a publisher of audiobooks, a title the company has been hesitant to accept for its podcasting efforts. The purchase also marks Spotify’s most significant investment in audiobooks, and is the latest sign of its ambition to grow beyond a music app to become the default service for audio of all kinds.

“The goal is for Spotify listeners to be able to buy any audiobook in the world. If you are a true-crime podcast junkie, you are buying true crime audiobooks as well. Spotify has experimented with audiobooks for a couple of years, offering some titles in the public domain, like “Jane Eyre,” for free,” Soderstrom explained.

Findaway has invested billions of dollars in the purchase of podcast studios and technology. The company expects the purchase to close this year, at which point it will begin adding more audiobooks to its service. As part of the acquisition deal, Publishers and authors working with Findaway must agree to distribute on Spotify and it will sell individual audiobooks to all of its users.

Authors and publishers who use their own payment processing technology will be able to keep all of the sales, while those who use Spotify’s technology will share the revenue. Individual authors will be able to self-distribute books. Findaway will maintain its headquarters in Solon, Ohio, and will continue to be led by founder and Chief Executive Officer Mitch Kroll.

Amazon.com Inc.’s Audible is the dominant player in audiobooks, and Spotify hopes to compete by putting books in front of its nearly 400 million listeners.

The two companies are expected to work together to accelerate Spotify’s entry into the audiobook space through innovations that will also help creators on their platform to achieve economic growth.

The Audiobooks market was valued at $4 billion in 2020, and is estimated to reach $20 billion by 2030. Audiobooks were launched in 1932 by The American Foundation for the Blind, to give visually impaired people access to books. It is recently becoming more popular, and companies are reaching out to cash in on its popularity.

The last time I checked, the most talked-about Anambra Gubernatorial election in Nigeria had graciously come and gone, to the glory of God. In other words, the concerned electorate are at the moment not unaware of their next Governor.

Life generally is conspicuously characterized by tremendous intrigues and intricacies. This is the reason some persons who truly comprehend the features of nature don’t seemingly hold anything firmly.

They do so, believing that whatever one beholds can depart at anytime, and in most cases, it happens unannounced. This set of individuals, that’s invariably found anywhere across the globe, is often referred to as a group of realists.

Realism is simply the ability to face any ongoing circumstance or trending events squarely as they appear without making any effort to twist their real outlook or value. This school of thought enables mankind to be rational and real at all times.

In elections or electioneering era for instance, several intrigues are usually observed by the onlookers. Taking Nigeria as a case study, each time any election approaches, the concerned aspirants or political parties are – rather than dwelling on issue-based campaigns – relentlessly involved in exposing their dirty lilies in the public domain.

An aspirant or candidate who is expected to inform the people what he/she intends to do towards ushering in the anticipated good governance when he emerges victoriously, would end up telling the electorate why they shouldn’t vote for his/her rival(s), thereby contradicting the scenario.

In a situation whereby the ruling party is contesting for a certain position or reelection and its closest rival happens to have tasted the leadership seat in the past, the two parties – both the ruling and opposition – would be mainly involved in castigating each other as they go about their day-to-day campaigns towards gaining the people’s votes.

They unabatedly concentrate on this wayward style of campaign, and they do so vigorously and doggedly, forgetting what the voters really need to hear from them is their plan on how to position or reposition the country or state, as the case may be, positively if they became elected at the polls.

This character assassination as mentioned above, popularly known as “blame game”, had in recent times eaten deep into the bloodstream of the Nigeria’s political system and its likes. It has hitherto continued endlessly as was witnessed in the just concluded Anambra State governorship election.

In the aforementioned polls, such a game was keenly, though ‘shamefully’, played by three key political parties namely, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

At the moment, it’s obvious that after the rigorous blame games that heralded the said election, a victor consequently emerged as was publicly declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Returning Officer in the person of Prof. Florence Obi on Tuesday, 9th November 2021 after the supplementary poll that took place in Ihiala LGA, the area where votes weren’t cast on the election day being Saturday, 6th November 2021.

Prof. Obi, having painstakingly studied the outcomes of the elections as were separately conducted in the existing 21 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the State and consequently tendered by the various Returning Officers from the LGAs, graciously announced the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Chukwuma Soludo of the APGA, which is the current ruling party in the province, as the winner of the keenly contested poll.

It’s noteworthy that the Certificates of Return were presented to the duo of victors Prof. Soludo and his deputy, Dr. Onyeka Ibezim on 12th November 2021, as requested by the extant law.

Millions of people the world over are currently celebrating with the victors, whilst some others are reportedly aggrieved with the pronounced outcome of the polls. Whatever the case might be, the bone of contention remains that a winner had finally emerged from the blame game after the suspense and intrigues that transpired.

At this juncture, I want to candidly appreciate Nigerians, particularly the people of Anambra, for the maturity and patience displayed before, during and after the polls. Election as an exercise is a process, hence entails various sections. The first part of it is for the electorate to collectively cast their votes; the Anambranians participated in this phase with extreme maturity despite the odds.

The second phase entails awaiting the pronouncement of the outcome of the election. This section equally requires to be participated with a patriotic mindset imbued with patience. Anambranians in their numbers also did as expected while in this very phase.

The third phase involves declaration of any of the contenders as the victor of the exercise or competition. It’s noteworthy that the victor is constitutionally the candidate who garnered the maximum number of votes against his/her co-contestants as well as acquired the required spread across the available States or LGAs in the country or State, respectively, as might be the case..

I equally commend the citizens for accepting this section in good faith as we appeal to the defeated candidate(s) who wish(es) to query the outcome or the declaration to use the apt channel, which remains the legal means.

The PDP has already announced its displeasure over the outcome of the election, and may be approaching the Election Tribunal soonest. We therefore enjoin them to remain calm and mature till the entire proceeding is over.

Similar appeal goes to the candidates or political parties who were reportedly defeated. They must endeavour to use the right and lawful channel in showcasing their respective grievances.

So, as I congratulate the Governor-Elect, Prof. Soludo and his Deputy, Dr. Ibezim alongside their entire team, for emerging as the next democratically-elected Governor of Anambra, I equally congratulate the teeming Anambranians for the fantastic and remarkable role they variously played towards ensuring that peace and harmony were maintained across the shores of the State.

Above all, as I appreciate the INEC for eventually concluding this labour and cost intensive task, I enjoin the commission to look inwards to ensure that whatever lapse(s) experienced in the last polls isn’t/aren’t witnessed in the impending ones.

Hence, the electoral umpire must tactically go back to the drawing board. The various technical hitches recorded at different localities on the day of the election must be considered, aptly x-rayed and addressed for the sake of future elections.

All in all, as Anambranians collectively enjoy this relative peace, I urge them to continually remind ourselves that there’s no other State, aside Anambra, they can proudly and boldly call their own.

Portugal, a Southern European country recently passed a law called right to rest. This new law bans employers of labour and office bosses and makes it illegal for them to text message, email or call their staff or workers outside the employees working hours for work related reasons. The move is part of changes being introduced to improve work-life balance in response to an expansion of working from home in the country, give people more time to rest and have a good and peaceful family time hence why the new law was dubbed ‘right to rest’. 

Therefore, as of today an employer or boss in Portugal will be breaking the law if he calls a staff, texts a staff, emails a staff or sends for a staff outside working time of that staff for work related reasons and that employer will be made to face the law. 

The Portugal’s Minister of Labour and Social Security, Ana Mendes Godinho during a press conference in Lisbon while narrating the need for this new law ‘right to rest’ told the news men that “telework can be a game-changer” but its growth needs to be regulated.

It has always been the case that bosses at work feel they own their workers’ time and by extension owns the workers’ lives  and can ring any staff or send for any staff at any time they want and that staff don’t have a say on it unless the staff wants to get punished, queried or even loose his job.

This law should be introduced and adopted in all countries of the world and any country that cares about the good health, peace of mind and longevity of the lives of its citizens. Even the Christian’s holy books says in Ecclesiastes 3vs 1 that there’s time for everything; there’s time to work and time to rest and one should not take the place of the other.