Partnership gives Africell DRC’s enterprise clients access to next-generation customer communications technology

Africell, the pan-African mobile network operator, has announced that it is partnering with Google Jibe and Dotgo®, a leading cloud communications provider of Rich Communication Services (RCS) business messaging solutions, to offer RCS business messaging on its network in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

RCS, a part of the 5G standard, is the next generation of SMS that includes pictures, audio, video, and presence, combined with enhanced security and encryption. RCS messages are delivered into the native messaging apps such as Google Messages and Samsung Messages on Android phones. RCS Business Messaging uses the rich and interactive features of RCS to enable branded and secure business messaging. As of today, RCS is available globally with over 600M monthly active users.

As part of the partnership, Google will provide Africell the cloud infrastructure for delivering RCS messages to Africell subscribers, including the Google Jibe RCS platform for business messaging. Dotgo will provide its MaaP (Messaging-as-a-Platform), integrated with the Google Jibe RCS platform, along with complete managed services needed to operate and monetize RCS Business Messaging. The Dot-go MaaP is industry’s leading solution for offering RCS business messaging, pre-integrated with all the major RCS providers, including Google, Vodafone, Orange, Mavenir, and Synchronoss. Dotgo provides all the features and services needed to monetize and deliver business messages—a suite of RCS APIs for sending and receiving RCS traffic, including the award-winning RichOTP® API, onboarding and verification, Bot Store® for discovery and triggers to chatbots, protection of international messaging revenue, billing, reconciliation, and market evangelization. The Dotgo MaaP also supports common APIs, onboarding, and verification across multiple carriers in a country or a region, even when they are using different RCS providers.

"Our enterprise customers expect to use the latest chat technologies when communicating with customers. RCS Business Messaging, as a natural upgrade to our SMS business messaging solutions, meets this demand. We chose Google and Dotgo to provide and manage our RCS offering because they have the most advanced systems and a track record of working together to enable and monetize RCS, including for other operators in Africa,” says Milad Khairallah, CEO of Africell DRC.

"RCS business messaging is growing rapidly, and we are delighted that Africell is joining our RCS network. Dotgo’s platform and services complement Google’s offering, and will ensure rapid monetization, as well as enable common onboarding across all carriers in a market," remarks Jason Choy, Director, Partnerships, Communication Products at Google.

"RCS helps increase trust, security, and interactivity in business messaging, leading to improved customer engagement. We look forward to working with and supporting the CPaaS providers, developers, and brands in DRC to move their business messaging to RCS when reaching out to subscribers of Africell,” says Dr. Inderpal Singh Mumick, CEO, Dotgo.