MTN, pan-Africa telecommunications company, has joined the league of prominent players in the global telecom Application Programming Interface (API) market. The telecoms giant, a few days ago, announced its new API marketplace to enable developers and businesses discover and subscribe to what will become the largest library of open APIs published on the African continent.

According to Global Telecom API Market Size & Trends Report, 2020-2027 published in May 2020, the global telecom API market size was valued at USD 126.8 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9% from 2020 to 2027.

An API is a set of communication protocols and tools that aid in the development of mobile applications. Such interfaces provide readily available features and services that allow developers to only focus on application development. It simplifies the application development process by eliminating the need to develop every feature from scratch.

APIs are imperative across all the mobile applications and services that include messaging, voice and video calling, mobile payments, and location tracking. Increasing number of mobile service subscribers is a major factor contributing to the market growth. As per statistics published by GSMA, the total number of mobile service subscriptions was around 5.1 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach 5.8 billion by 2025, thus, propelling the demand for APIs.

Growing adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) is also expected to positively influence market growth. APIs play an essential role in monetizing the IoT network as they act as a point of interaction between several elements within the network. Mobile operators are focusing on expanding their role in the value chain to provide end-to-end IoT solutions reducing their dependency on other third-party solution providers.

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The market has high growth potential in emerging regions, such as Africa and Asia Pacific, due to increasing number of start-ups. Telecom operators, such as Orange and Vodafone Group, have developed partnerships with start-ups in these markets. Such partnerships have enabled mobile operators to tap new revenue streams by allowing start-ups and developers to access their APIs, thus, propelling market growth.

Only a week ago, MTN launched its partnership which the company described as Africa’s largest API marketplace. Branded ‘Chenosis’, the latest API marketplace will enable developers to tap into a broad spectrum of API products and services from across the continent, ranging from telecommunications, e-health, e-government, IoT, fintech, e-commerce, identity and authentication, payments and collections, location and more, from a single marketplace.

“Chenosis is a separate brand and entity, and will have an arms-length relationship with MTN so that it remains open to all mobile network operators, fintech start-ups, payment service providers, mobile wallet operators, financial service providers, and more,” explained Charles Molapisi, MTN Group Chief Technology and Information Officer.

The Chenosis Marketplace allows businesses and developers to publish their APIs so that other developers can discover and consume them. The marketplace also provides the tools for publishers to monetise and promote their APIs, by creating subscription plans and product bundles that developers and businesses can purchase. The Chenosis Marketplace portal has dashboards for publishers and consumers to track revenue and credit balances, view consumption analytics and API performance and lots more.

The power of the platform will be in the