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Chenosis, MTN’s innovative API marketplace business, is on a mission to “transform the software engineering landscape of Africa”, according to CEO Saad Syed. The company’s aim is not to offer a network API platform for its own sake, but rather to “democratize development”, he says, adding that “APIs are a great way of doing that.”
Ed Finegold
Chenosis aims to transform software engineering in Africa through network APIs
MTN announced Chenosis in August 2020 and granted the startup considerable autonomy from the larger MTN Group, as TM Forum outlined in the report Establishing links: Platform models in the Open API economy. Chenosis’ early positioning was as a marketplace selling MTN APIs and others from third parties.
The company is GSMA Open Gateway’s Africa Champion but, says its CEO, Saad Syed, it is also looking to go beyond its remit by offering APIs and services beyond the scope of network APIs. Syed’s vision and overarching goal for MTN Chenosis is to spark software innovation in markets across Africa by engaging with startups and delivering a variety of resources in addition to its API platform.
MTN Chenosis’ early solution and API initiatives have included:
Waseem Amra, General Manager for products and platform at Chenosis, explains that the API marketplace also includes partner APIs which are non-telco, and which MTN Chenosis calls “beyond telco”. They are typically provided by startups which publish these APIs on the MTN Chenosis API marketplace. MTN Chenosis in turn provides distribution through demand generation activities via its sales team and through marketing efforts.
At the time of writing MTN Chenosis was also due to go to market with a new no-code website builder, incorporating GenAI and drag-and-drop design, including for API calls. This simplified design is key, says Amra, because it removes the “need [for] intermediary programing skills to interface with an API”. MTN Chenosis “wanted to make things more accessible”, Amra says, and to that end all API calls within the new website builder are “drag-drop widgets so anyone can access those capabilities”.
The APIs that MTN Chenosis offers to enterprises lean toward data-centric functions, as opposed to 5G connectivity or features, because 5G isn’t yet widely available across Africa. Chenosis is therefore focused on becoming a channel to enable “anonymized data and consent-based data journeys for use cases such as fraud mitigation, know your customer and customer onboarding, and customer marketing, to name a few”, says Syed.
To support such data journeys. MTN Chenosis offers API-based solutions, many of which relate to identity management, such as:
In Africa, regulations like South Africa’s Protection Of Personal Information Act (POPIA) restrict the sharing, movement and use of personal data. MTN Chenosis has positioned itself to be an intermediary between buyers and sellers, providing a single API platform to enable features like personalized experiences while also allowing its customers to comply with strict but differing privacy laws across Africa.
MTN Chenosis aims to become a primary identity broker for Africa. APIs like number verification and SIM swap detection can be used effectively in processes that validate and authenticate identities, like new account openings, password changes and monetary transactions. For example, MTN Chenosis already provides a know your customer (KYC) API which the Ministry of Agriculture of Zambia uses to confirm ownership of mobile numbers to help confirm smallhold farmers’ identities and ensure funds are disbursed correctly and safely.
“Once you solve the digital identity issues with the mobile phone, countries do much better with digital transformation,” Amra says. MTN Chenosis’ leadership with GSMA Open Gateway APIs can enable them to “offer their own identity management services but co-operate with each other to help businesses that use both ecosystems”, just as Apple and Google do, says Amra. He sees location as the next big network API frontier, “because there’s so much application for it, not just in customer protection”.
Location APIs have been controversial in some markets because of privacy laws that make them difficult or impossible to deploy. South Africa’s privacy laws are among the strictest, which has encouraged MTN Chenosis to be creative with location-based solutions that are also compliant with strict privacy laws. “Rather than exposing raw personal data, we can build abstraction layers that deliver the same business value while preserving privacy,” Amra explains. Rather than sharing precise latitude and longitude co-ordinates through an API, for example, the distance between two points can be calculated and only that measurement shared. “This derived value can still be used in risk models,’ Amra says, “to detect unusual patterns without ever revealing the actual locations.”
Barriers to financial inclusion remain in many parts of Africa, Amra explains, including having a cash-based ecosystem where “no formal digital trail” is left behind on which to establish credit. Mobile connectivity provides a “powerful proxy for financial behavior” because activities like “airtime top-ups, mobile money usage and SIM tenure form a behavioral footprint that can be used to assess creditworthiness” Amra says. MTN Chenosis generates alternative credit scores to turn the “unseen into the seen” – giving credit to new groups for the first time and helping banks reach new customer categories using non-traditional methods to assess credit risk and history.
The key common threads across these network API offerings and solutions are their focus on expanding access to innovation and promoting economic enablement. MTN Chenosis’ network APIs and related solutions address practical digital economy positives and negatives, like enabling real-time payments and preventing real-time payment scams.
“Our continued investment in digital infrastructure is foundational to driving meaningful impact in Africa,” says Mazen Mroue, Group CTIO for MTN, CEO for MTN Digital Infrastructure and Board Member for Chenosis. “With Chenosis as a key enabler, we’re opening core capabilities to businesses, accelerating innovation and creating the conditions for the continent to shape its own future in the global tech economy.”
Syed encourages operators rolling out network APIs to think beyond the API with an eye toward economic transformation. “There are government bodies really interested in the coming together of no-code platforms and APIs to allow anyone with a great idea to deliver progressive web apps, mobile apps, e-commerce sites and web sites at pace with minimal spend,” he explains.
MTN Chenosis aspires to offer the African continent a multi-purpose set of tools to drive “not just digital transformation at a continental level but economic transformation, hopefully changing the lives of many Africans in the process”, Syed says.
Though global economic landscapes vary by country, the concepts Syed and Amra are putting into practice at MTN Chenosis are applicable to different markets. Factors like ease-of-use, responsiveness to customer needs, and recognizing the growth in demand for mobile data – particularly from the financial services sector, and especially relating to identity, location and device status – are crucial takeaways for any operator developing and deploying a network API strategy.
For a deeper dive into network APIs and how they meet demand for identity verification, transaction authentication, location, know-your-customer and financial crime prevention, read our report How identity is driving the market for network APIs.
