Lets Talk: Nigeria's First Instant Messaging App To Launch Soon

An I.T. and Telecommunications Company based in Abuja, Lets Talk, has claimed to be working on introducing Nigeria's first instant messaging app, 'Lets Talk,' by the end of the third quarter of 2022.

The company's Chief Operating Officer, Folashade Ayeni, disclosed this to journalists in Abuja on Sunday.

According to Ayeni, the app was created by a group of Nigerian software developers in accordance with the National Information Technology Development Agency's (NITDA) objective of indigenous enterprises entering the social media arena.

She said: “Lets Talk was created out of a need that Nigerians and Africans have.

”If you look at it, sometime last year in October, October 4 To be precise, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram crashed.

"No one was able to use those applications because of one thing or the other.

“Many people lost money, several people were not able to reach families, friends, relatives and do business normally, because a whole lot of people have taken business and relationship to the social media.

“It crashed for about six hours or so and the reality dawned on us that really, whether it was intentional or not on purpose that we could lose everything.

”So we thought about owning our social media platform where people can have guaranteed communications and security, and privacy is also guaranteed, which is Nigerian-owned and indigenous for us in Africa.”

Ayeni stated that the company intends to work with NITDA, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), and other relevant agencies to ensure the application's success and acceptance by Nigerians.

She described the app's unique features as end-to-end encryption, the ability to listen to and share music, video and audio conversations, 5,000-member group chat, seven-person conference calls, and file sharing up to 2GB.

It also enables for device and cloud caching, as well as sharing moments and trends, according to her, providing consumers with highly pleasant experiences.

She stated that the app was available for both Android and Apple phones on Google Play and App Store.

Ayeni further stated that the app will be divided into two sections: Lets Talk Basic, which would be a free social networking platform, and Lets Talk Premium, which would be a subscription-based service.

“Now, there will be Lets Talk social which is the basic one that everybody knows.

"You chat, you speak to people, you do video calls do video conferences for free, but there’s a secondary part of it.

“And the secondary part of it is to provide enterprise resource management.

"So, there are people who want to subscribe to that package.

“We are talking about ministries, parastatal agencies, businesses, banks and other sectors that can utilise the platform to improve their businesses and services and that is where value comes in,” she said.