Airtel Africa has signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal with Xtelify, a Bharti Airtel subsidiary, to deploy an AI-powered software platform aimed at streamlining operations and enhancing customer experience across its 14 African markets.
The partnership will see the rollout of Xtelify Data Engine, Xtelify Work, and Xtelify IQ—tools that will equip 150,000 field agents with actionable insights for micro-targeted strategies and enable real-time, secure customer engagement. The system also supports spam detection, fraud prevention, and other critical functions.
“This marks a transformative leap in our mission to build Africa’s digital future,” said Jacques Barkhuizen, Group CIO at Airtel Africa. “We are simplifying operations and accelerating personalized experiences.”
Bharti Airtel said the move demonstrates strong synergy between its Indian innovation hub and African operations. Xtelify, originally developed for India, is now being replicated to support Airtel Africa’s growth, aiming to reduce churn and boost average revenue per user (ARPU).
In tandem, Bharti Airtel also launched the Airtel Cloud, a sovereign telco-grade platform capable of handling 1.4 billion transactions per minute, built for scale and hosted on sustainable data centers.
This follows broader regional trends. MTN Group has also begun deploying AI across Africa, with use cases ranging from network traffic optimization in Nigeria to energy management in Benin and fibre cut sensing in Côte d’Ivoire.
The move underscores how African telcos are rapidly adopting AI to drive operational efficiency, security, and customer-centric innovation.
