Tigo has partnered Facebook to give East African customers free access to the social networking site across all mobile networks.
“What this partnership means is that Tigo customers can, for the first time, access Facebook through their handsets without incurring any data charges and connect with the social media network’s two millions users in Tanzania and its 1.2 billion users worldwide,” CNBC Africa quoted the General Manager of the mobile operator, Tigo, Diego Gutierrez to have said at the launch of the partnership.
The strategic partnership is part of Facebook’s recent Internet.org initiative launched by the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg.
This is however the second time that Facebook and Millicom, Tigo’s parent company, have gone into collaboration since the launch of Facebook’s free mobile access in Paraguay in December 2003.
One of the main advantages of the initiative is that for the first time, the Facebook platform would be offered in English and Swahili, the national language of Tanzanians and the majority of people in East, Central and Southern Africa.
Tanzania will therefore become the first country to showcase the Swahili language globally.
