Facebook Partners Tigo to Give Customers Free Access
By: Godfrey Olukya
Tigo Tanzania announced today a partnership with Facebook in which
all its customers in the country will get free access to Facebook
services in English and a new Kiswahili version through their mobile
handsets.
It is the first time that Facebook will be free on any mobile network
in East Africa, according to Tigo General Manager Diego Gutierrez.
Speaking at the launch of the partnership in Dar es Salaam, Gutierrez
said, “What this partnership means is that Tigo customers can, for the
first time, access Facebook through their handsets without incurring
any data charges and connect with the social media network’s two
millions of users in Tanzania and its 1.2 billion users worldwide.
Gutierrez added: “It is the first time any major social media company
has made a version in Kiswahili the national language spoken by
Tanzanians and majority of the people in East, Central and Southern
African region.
“Facebook has been a fantastic driver of data on mobile networks. With
this unique partnership, we are making Tigo stand out from the crowd
and giving many customers their first taste of the internet and social
media, including in Kiswahili. That’s what creating the digital
lifestyle is all about, and it reinforces our strategy to encourage
more Tigo customers to use data as part of their daily communications
activity.”
The strategic partnership is part of Facebook’s recent Internet.org
initiative launched by the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg.
Guttierrez said “The new service will open new frontiers to
Tanzanians and to other Kiswahili speakers by offering them new
business, educational and other socio-economic opportunities across
the world.”
Apart from the five East African Community (EAC) member states, Kenya,
Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, Kiswahili is also spoken in
parts of Malawi, Somali, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and
Mozambique.
With this launch Tanzania, a country recognized for being the cradle
of Kiswahili language, becomes the first in the region the region to
showcase this language globally, a breakthrough that that Tigo, its
parent company Millicom and Facebook takes credit for.
This is the second time that Facebook and Millicom have partnered
following the joint launch of free mobile access to Facebook with Tigo
Paraguay in December 2013 and the service’s launch in the historical
native Guarani language there.
Nicola D’ Elia, Facebook Director for International Growth and
Partnerships commented “We’re excited to be working with Tigo again to
give more people in Tanzania the ability to share and connect free of
data charges across Facebook apps and mobile website, and now in the
traditional language of Kiswahili.”