At the maiden event which took place on Friday, January, 2023, in Accra, five out of the ten selected winners were awarded by MTN Ayoba for their immense achievements and providing strong micro-apps on the Ayoba app platform.
The startups were involved in an eight-week competition where MTN Ayoba worked with them on various entrepreneurial businesses, ranging from agriculture, and entertainment to productivity to help onboard them onto the Ayoba App to better serve customers.
The competition was created by MTN Ghana and Ayoba for all startup hubs across the country to bring forward their digital solutions by leveraging the Ayoba App platform to scale their businesses.
The winners - Noni Hub won the Top Tech App Award, taking home GHS50,000 and a lifetime partnership with MTN while Africa Global Radio emerged as the Most Liked Micro App on Ayoba and got GHS20,000 and a lifetime partnership with MTN. An online shopping app called “Tudu” also won an award for the Best Micro App in Ayoba and took away GHS20,000 and a lifetime partnership with MTN.
Smithfield Agribusiness won the Expert Choice Award, which came with GHS20,000 and a lifetime partnership with MTN and Demasko Smart App took the Top Ayoba Influencer Award with GHS20,000 and a lifetime partnership with MTN.
Speaking at the awards ceremony held at the MTN House in Accra, Chief Digital Officer at MTN Ghana, Dario Bianchi explained that MTN Ayoba came up with the accelerator to encouraged all local business operators in Africa to take advantage of the Ayoba platform to digitize their products and services to reach more clients and to meet the prevailing fast pace digital world.
He opined that MTN telecommunication aimed to help entrepreneurs with ideas in the digital space to grow their marketing channels by reaching larger audiences via the Ayoba app.
He also stated that the platform will connect businesses to their prospective customers and ensure easy marketing.
“MTN Ayoba Momo Accelerator is the best place to put your product and information out there to the world”, Mr. Bianchi said.
On her part, Manager for Digital Platform at MTN Ghana, Winnie Dzidonu, said MTN Ayoba Momo Accelerator selected some tech hubs from the Ghana tech hub for a two-week training out of which 18 were entered into the production.
She said five winners were eventually selected and awarded for their impact.
She also said that the Ayoba app was free to use and with no revenue share agreement although there were plans in the future for revenue share.
“MTN will continue to work with these hubs to provide good and effective digital services for all,” she added.
Madam Dzidonu expressed appreciation and gratitude to all participants and winners for their great works in supporting MTN Ayoba MoMo Accelerator.
MTN Ghana says it seeks to support the ecosystem by providing and offering a platform for audiences to submit their solutions and help integrate MoMo.
Ayoba is an all-in-one App with the services of communication where one could chat with their contacts, make video and voice calls.
Users also have access to news, information, videos, pictures on tourism, sports, gaming, and music among others. Whilst it is free for MTN users to access that App freely, non-MTN users need data bundle to access the services.