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Airtel Africa transforms customer experience and security with Xtelify’s Data Engine

  • Date Icon June 12, 2025
  • Time Icon5 min read

Overview 

Airtel Africa, one of the continent’s largest and fastest-growing telecommunications providers, serves over 166 million customers across 14 countries through a robust network of mobile, fibre, and digital services. As digital adoption accelerates and customer expectations rise, Airtel Africa is committed to delivering secure, seamless, and highly personalized experiences at every touchpoint. The company’s digital strategy focuses on simplifying journeys, reducing customer frustration, and ensuring proactive engagement—whether through rapid service fulfillment, real-time alerts, or targeted communications. To support this vision, Airtel Africa partnered with Xtelify to deploy the Data Engine (DE)—a next-generation platform that empowers granular customer actions, AI-driven spam mitigation, grid-based marketing, and a unified, real-time view of every customer. 

Challenges 

Airtel Africa’s dynamic and diverse markets present unique challenges, which CDE is purpose-built to address: 

  • Granular Customer Actions and Localized Marketing:
    Serving 166 million customers across 14 countries means Airtel Africa must deliver tailored offers and interventions at a micro-market level. Achieving this requires actionable, real-time insights into customer behavior and network usage, enabling teams to move from broad campaigns to hyper-local engagement and launch region- or grid-specific marketing initiatives that truly resonate. 
  • Protecting Customers from Spam at Scale:
    The rise of unsolicited and fraudulent communications is a growing concern across Africa, eroding trust and impacting customer experience. Airtel Africa needs a robust, automated way to detect and block spam in real time, ensuring customers feel safe and confident in their digital interactions. 
  • Driving Relevant Recommendations with AI:
    To maximize customer engagement and satisfaction, Airtel Africa must move beyond generic promotions. There is a need for an intelligent recommendation engine that leverages AI to analyze behavioral patterns and suggest relevant products, services, or offers to each customer, increasing the effectiveness of every interaction. 
  • Achieving a Unified Customer View:
    Fragmented data across multiple channels and systems can hinder seamless experiences and limit the ability to personalize engagement. A single, unified view of each customer is essential for delivering consistent, high-quality service. 

Solution 

Airtel Africa implemented Xtelify’s CDE, leveraging advanced AI, a robust telco-centric data model, and a grid-based approach to deliver secure, personalized, and actionable customer intelligence across the continent. 

How CDE Delivers Value: 

  • Granular Actions & Grid-Based Marketing: 
    CDE segments Airtel Africa’s network and customer base into micro-markets, enabling hyper-local interventions and campaigns. By analyzing customer behavior, usage, and engagement at the grid level, sales and marketing teams can deploy targeted offers, optimize resource allocation, and measure campaign impact with precision. 
  • AI-Driven Spam Mitigation: 
    CDE’s AI models analyze hundreds of parameters in real time—including call/SMS patterns, device behavior, and location signals—to detect and block unsolicited and suspicious communications before they reach customers. The system leverages data signals from SIM, device, and network, and is continuously trained on new patterns, ensuring robust protection as spam tactics evolve. Customers benefit from real-time alerts and a significant reduction in unwanted messages. 
  • AI-Powered Recommendation Engine: 
    By unifying customer data and leveraging AI-driven analytics, CDE enables Airtel Africa to deliver relevant product and service recommendations to each customer. The platform’s recommendation engine analyzes historical interactions, preferences, and contextual data to suggest the most appropriate offers, driving higher engagement and satisfaction. 
  • One View of the Customer: 
    CDE integrates data from all touchpoints—mobile, web, retail, and service—creating a unified profile for each customer. This holistic, real-time view supports seamless personalization, improved service, and more effective cross-sell and upsell strategies. The platform’s TM Forum-compliant data model ensures rapid deployment and adaptability to local business contexts. 

“We are excited to have Xtelify as a core technology partner, enabling us to deliver meaningful digital advancements and enriching the lives of millions across Africa,”

Jacques Barkhuizen, Group Chief Information Officer – Airtel Africa.

Impact 

Challenge  Before   After  
Granular actions & grid-based marketing  Broad, generic campaigns; limited micro-market visibility  Hyper-local actions and region/grid-specific campaigns based on real-time data 
Spam mitigation  Manual, reactive blocking; high exposure to unwanted messages  AI-driven detection and proactive blocking of spam 
Recommendation engine  Generic promotions; low relevance  Personalized, AI-powered recommendations for each customer 
Unified customer view  Fragmented data, inconsistent experience  Single, unified customer profile across all channels and services 

 What’s changing for Airtel Africa: 

  • Field and marketing teams can now launch and measure highly targeted campaigns at the micro-market level. 
  • Customers benefit from robust, AI-powered protection against spam, with real-time alerts and safer digital journeys. 
  • Every customer interaction is informed by a unified, 360-degree view, enabling seamless personalization and improved satisfaction. 
  • Airtel Africa is positioned to lead in both digital innovation and customer trust across the telecom sector. 

Conclusion 

By adopting Xtelify’s Data Engine, Airtel Africa is shaping the future of customer experience and digital trust across the continent. The integration of granular actions, AI-driven security, grid-based marketing, a recommendation engine, and a unified customer view is setting new standards for digital experience, marketing effectiveness, and customer confidence in Africa’s fast-evolving telecom landscape.