Orange Pushes Max It Super App Toward 75 Million Users in Africa

Telecom operators once measured success in towers, spectrum licences and subscriber counts. Increasingly, the fight sits elsewhere. It sits inside apps.

That is the premise behind Orange’s attempt to push the Max It super app to 75 million users by 2028. The target sits well above the current base of about 25 million users. The ambition alone says something about where the French operator believes its future in Africa lies.

Connectivity still pays the bills. Yet the company’s internal conversation has clearly moved on from the old metric of SIM cards. The real contest now concerns digital ecosystems. Payments, video, gaming, retail marketplaces, micro-services. Each one extends the operator’s reach beyond the network and deeper into daily digital behaviour.

It is not a new idea. Asian technology firms proved the concept years ago. But African telecom groups are now attempting their own versions, each with local adjustments.

Orange is entering that contest with urgency.

The super app race arrives in African telecom

A “super app” is shorthand for a platform that bundles multiple digital services under one login. Messaging, payments, entertainment and shopping exist in the same interface.

Orange’s Max It attempts something close to that model. Users can access telecom services, streaming content, games and digital payments through a single platform anchored by Orange Money.

That last component carries the real weight.

Orange Money already serves about 47 million customers and processes around €20 billion in transfers every month. Financial activity on that scale creates gravity. If payments sit inside the Max It ecosystem, other services have a reason to cluster there.

Telecom operators across the continent have reached similar conclusions. Data packages alone produce thin margins. Payment systems, digital services and small enterprise tools produce stickier relationships with customers.

What is happening, in effect, is a gradual migration from infrastructure provider to platform operator.

It does not always look elegant. Telecom firms remain engineers at heart. Software ecosystems run on different instincts. Still, the logic keeps pushing them in that direction.

Africa’s demographics create a fertile digital market

Orange’s leadership often returns to one point when discussing Africa: demographics.

The continent holds more than 1.5 billion people. The median age sits near 20. Mobile phones arrived before many other forms of infrastructure. The result is a population comfortable conducting large parts of life through handheld devices.

That matters for digital services.

Streaming entertainment, mobile payments, gaming and micro-commerce all thrive where young populations spend time online. Telecom networks become the distribution channel. Apps become the storefront.

For Orange, this demographic landscape also explains why Africa remains one of its most dynamic regions. The Middle East and Africa division reported revenue growth above 12 percent in 2025, with EBITDA rising almost 14 percent. Margins approached 40 percent.

Those numbers suggest a business with room to expand.

Yet demographics alone do not guarantee dominance. Competition across African telecom markets has become intense. MTN Group, Airtel Africa and Vodacom all pursue similar digital strategies, each anchored in their own mobile finance platforms.

In other words, the super app contest will not be settled by population growth alone.

Mobile money becomes the gravitational centre

If there is a single asset telecom operators rely on in Africa, it is mobile money.

Payments unlock everything else. Digital marketplaces need a wallet. Streaming subscriptions need a billing mechanism. Gaming purchases require the same.

Orange Money therefore functions as the engine beneath the Max It platform. The financial network existed long before the super app concept appeared. Now it provides the rails on which additional services can travel.

This structure mirrors patterns seen elsewhere in the global technology industry. Payment networks often evolve into broader digital ecosystems once enough users accumulate.

The distinction in Africa lies in who built those networks. In Asia the winners often emerged from technology firms. Across much of Africa, telecom companies built the early financial rails themselves.

That history places operators in a stronger position than many observers expected a decade ago.

Fintech startups still compete aggressively, though they usually rely on telecom infrastructure somewhere along the chain. Regulatory rules in several countries also require partnerships with licensed telecom or banking institutions.

The boundaries blur quickly.

Telecom networks no longer carry the whole business

Connectivity still anchors the sector. Orange’s data revenue continues to grow at roughly 18 percent annually across the region.

Yet executives increasingly treat connectivity as the foundation rather than the destination.

Enterprise services illustrate that change. Orange’s ICT business remains relatively small compared with consumer mobile services. Still, it is expanding quickly. The broader B2B segment grows near 10 percent annually.

Large corporations across Africa now rely on telecom firms for cloud connectivity, cybersecurity infrastructure and managed digital systems. The telecom operator becomes something closer to a technology integrator.

It creates a different revenue profile. Traditional mobile tariffs fluctuate under competitive pressure. Enterprise contracts often run longer and involve complex service bundles.

That dynamic partially explains the industry’s appetite for platforms like the Max It super app. The operator wants deeper relationships with users and companies alike.

More services mean more points of contact.

Artificial intelligence enters the telecom toolkit

Another piece of the story sits behind the scenes.

Telecom networks generate enormous amounts of data about user behaviour. In prepaid markets, which dominate much of Africa, customers can switch operators quickly. Loyalty cannot be assumed.

Artificial intelligence helps operators monitor those patterns in real time. It studies usage habits, predicts churn risk and tailors offers to specific customers.

The same technology accelerates software development inside large platforms such as the Max It super app. Engineers use machine-assisted coding tools to build features faster and refine existing services.

There is also a linguistic dimension.

Africa contains hundreds of languages and wide variations in literacy levels. Digital interfaces that rely on English or French alone leave many users outside the system. AI tools capable of handling local languages could widen the reach of telecom applications significantly.

Orange has begun experimenting with such systems. Whether they work at scale remains an open question.

Connectivity gaps still shape the digital map

Super apps assume reliable internet access. In much of Africa that assumption still requires work.

Fibre networks concentrate in dense urban centres where installation costs make economic sense. Large rural areas remain difficult to serve through fixed infrastructure alone.

That explains Orange’s interest in 5G for fixed wireless access.

Rather than laying kilometres of fibre, operators can deploy wireless broadband through existing mobile towers. The technology already appears in markets such as Egypt, Morocco, Botswana, Senegal and Tunisia.

Performance varies depending on spectrum availability and population density. Yet the model offers a pragmatic way to extend broadband coverage across regions where fibre installation would take years.

The broader digital economy depends on those connections.

A super app cannot thrive if large sections of the population struggle with unstable connectivity.

A regional portfolio designed to absorb shocks

Orange operates in 18 markets across Africa and the Middle East. None contributes more than 10 percent of the regional business.

The structure is deliberate.

Currency volatility, political uncertainty and regulatory intervention frequently complicate operations in emerging markets. A diversified footprint spreads those risks.

If one country experiences economic turbulence, others may continue expanding. The result resembles a portfolio rather than a single national bet.

This structure also complicates platform strategies like the Max It super app. Services must adapt to different regulatory environments, consumer preferences and language patterns.

The platform cannot simply copy a European design template.

Localisation becomes unavoidable.

The larger question beneath the super app push

The pursuit of 75 million Max It users raises a deeper issue about telecom companies in Africa.

For years analysts argued that global technology giants would dominate digital platforms on the continent. Silicon Valley firms already control many online services used by African consumers.

Yet telecom operators possess something those firms lack: direct billing relationships with tens of millions of users and nationwide infrastructure.

That advantage does not guarantee victory. Technology companies move faster. They build software cultures that telecom groups sometimes struggle to match.

Still, the race is more open than it once appeared.

If Orange can turn the Max It super app into a widely used platform, the operator may demonstrate that telecom infrastructure still provides a powerful foundation for digital ecosystems.

If the effort falters, the lesson may run in the opposite direction.

Either way, the contest now unfolding across Africa’s telecom sector looks less like a battle over networks and more like a contest for everyday digital life. The towers remain essential. The future may sit in the app that rides on top of them.

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