For several months, WhatsApp users have been alarmed by the platform's new data protection rules. In Cameroon, many have decided to abandon the American giant, in favor of local solutions led by Alain Ekambi and Valère Tchapda.

The applications Dikalo, OnDjoss or Mbuntu want to provide Cameroon with a local messaging solution. They offer stickers and decorations representing African cultures, sending written, audio and video messages, public and private discussions among others. To stand out from the competition, Dikalo offers the possibility to register with an email address, unlike WhatsApp which requires a phone number.

 Valère Tchapda, promoter of OnDjoss, and Alain Ekambi, founder of Dikalo and Mbuntu, are engineers living in Germany. Their common goal is to push Africans to create and consume their own technologies. An ambitious concept that is gaining momentum among the population, "Consuming locally" being of paramount importance for the development of the made in Cameroon.

This growing interest in local messaging solutions was triggered by the announcement of the change in WhatsApp's general privacy conditions. Since January 2021, the audience of these applications has almost doubled, with users looking for a more reliable protection of personal data.

"The basis of our philosophy is the absolute protection of the privacy of our users," assured Alain Ekambi. A philosophy supported by Valère Tchapda, who specifies that OnDjoss has been "developed with fairly powerful encryption algorithms. Communications are encrypted and secure," we read on Le Monde.

If the changes at WhatsApp benefit local technologies, they have yet to prove themselves to Cameroonians and Africans. For some, these new applications are just copying the American giant.

To date, the Mbuntu messaging and social network Dikalo has nearly 235,000 users from various backgrounds. OnDjoss, for its part, has more than 150,000 subscribers. These figures, far from WhatsApp and its more than 2 billion subscribers, do not discourage young entrepreneurs who want to gradually adopt African solutions on the continent.

Source : Agenceecofin.com