Airtel Nigeria on Thursday unveiled Africa’s first AI-powered spam alert service to protect mobile users from fraudulent and unsolicited messages.
The service, built over 12 months with input from more than 50 experts, uses artificial intelligence to analyse billions of data points daily and flag suspicious messages in real time, the mobile phone company says at the official unveiling of the service in Lagos.
Speaking at the launch event in Lagos on Thursday, Dinesh Balsingh, Airtel Nigeria CEO and Managing Director, says the company has been testing the system on its network for three months and has already identified 7.7 million spam messages and one million spammers.
Airtel Nigeria CEO: Spam alert service spotted 7.7 million messages, one million spammers
Speaking at the launch event in Lagos on Thursday, Dinesh Balsingh, Airtel Nigeria CEO and Managing Director, says the company has been testing the system on its network for three months and has already identified 7.7 million spam messages and one million spammers.
“We are talking here, it’s got so many man-hours of thinking and detailed working, which has finally led to this product,” Balsingh says. “It takes a lot of time. Close to 10,000 man-hours of data science effort.”
The service, which Airtel Africa calls a “gamechanger for the telecoms industry in Africa,” provides real-time alerts for suspected spam SMS messages without requiring any app downloads. It is automatically activated for all Airtel customers at no cost, the telecoms company says.
Airtel is rolling out the service first in Nigeria, its largest market with over 57 million subscribers as of January 2025, before expanding it to other African countries where it operates. “We are proud to launch this innovative initiative in Nigeria, our largest market in Africa, while the other countries will launch in the coming months,” Balsingh says.
How the Spam Alert Works
The AI-powered service analyses 8 million SMS messages daily, separating legitimate messages from spam in just two milliseconds. Balsingh says the system looks at several factors, including the frequency of messages sent, the sender’s location, and whether the sender receives any messages in return.
“Someone who is sending about 1,000 SMS in a span of 10 minutes, now that’s something suspicious,” Balsingh says. “Someone who sends only outgoing SMS and doesn’t receive any incoming SMS, so there’s no identity for the person now, that’s another parameter in the AI model.”
Frequent SIM swaps and large-scale message distribution across multiple locations also raise red flags. The Airtel Nigeria CEO says the AI model relies on about 250 different parameters to detect spam messages, learning and improving its accuracy over time.
Airtel’s early results suggest the system is already making a difference. Before the AI model was deployed, the company detected 7.7 million messages. Now, that number has dropped significantly. “I think now we’ve got about 2,500-3,000 spam messages coming on our network. It kind of crashed,” Balsingh says.
Subscribers receive alerts when the system detects a potential spam message, with a label that reads ‘suspected spam’ appearing above the message. “We believe this is ubiquitous, simple, easy for people to understand,” he says. “Because once there’s a suspected spam indicator at the top, I’m sure that you’ll beware.”
“Because once there’s a suspected spam indicator at the top, I’m sure that you’ll beware. So if there’s an OTP request, there’s something that will run in your mind,” he adds.
Airtel’s launch comes amid growing concerns over the rise of spam and fraud in Africa. According to Quartz, as of 2019, nine of the top 20 countries with the highest spam rates were in Africa.
“With Africa’s smartphone penetration on the increase, spam messages have become a widespread issue, targeting an expanding demographic of unsuspecting individuals,” Airtel Africa says. “Hundreds of thousands of mobile users often receive unsolicited SMS or calls claiming to be from their network provider or government and offering irresistible benefits.”
Scammers often use these tactics to trick users into providing personal information, which is then exploited for fraud. The new spam alert system aims to curb these threats before they reach users.
Airtel’s AI and Existing Solutions
Ismail Adesina, Airtel Nigeria’s Marketing Director, says many existing anti-spam solutions require users to install third-party apps and provide their personal data, making them restrictive and less effective. “Truecaller requires two things: One, you need to download the app. Two, you need to have data to use it, right?” According to him, “this solution does not require an app download. You don’t need an app. You don’t need to download any data. Airtel AI is behind you and is watching you, right? It’s protecting you.”
Airtel says its system is built for the Nigerian market and is already delivering results. “The latest count that we have got is a 99.5% reduction in spam messages,” Balsingh says. “So as far as we are concerned, we want to protect our customers from spam.”
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) welcomes Airtel’s decision to tackle spam through self-regulation. “Here we have one of our major players taking the issue into their own hands and self-regulating themselves,” Aminu Maida, NCC Executive Vice Chairman, says at the event in Lagos.
“As the telecommunications sector continues to grow, so do the threats to consumer security. The spam messages and fraudulent schemes are becoming more sophisticated. The NCC has always placed consumer protection at the heart of its regulatory mandates and we’re pleased to see operators taking proactive steps to safeguard their customers. Nigeria, like many other African nations, has seen a rise in this top fraud and spam-related scam,” the NCC chief says.
According to him, “the AI powered solution we’re seeing today provides a much-needed layer of security using advanced technology to detect and flag suspicious messages before they reach consumers. This aligns with the NCC’s broader commitment to improving the quality of telecom services and enhancing consumer trust in the industry.”
Maida, who acknowledges that spam messages remain a persistent problem in Nigeria, says the NCC will continue working with telecoms operators to address the issue. “I get these comments every day, but all I do is delete them or go into the reports function on Google platforms,” he says. “But they keep on coming on a daily basis.”
According to the NCC chief, “we encourage other operators to follow Airtel’s example in leveraging emerging technologies to improve customer safety.”
Maida adds that, “we will also work closely with the industry players to create policies and regulatory instruments that further strengthen the security measures across the sector.”
Dr. Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, also backed the initiative, saying it aligns with the government’s push for digital security.
“As we make commendable progress in deepening the global digital economy, allow me to echo the shared position of all stakeholders that we must continue to prioritise and promote data privacy, sovereignty, but also security as fundamental elements of maintaining trust and stability in a world that is increasingly interconnected, which is part of why we’re here today,” Tijani says.
The Minister says that AI can play a broader role in Nigeria’s economy beyond spam filtering. “AI has the potential to revolutionise so many aspects of our lives,” he says. “It can help increase how we view diagnosis and releases, transform education by making it more personal, bridging the gap in protection and inclusion, and, as we are learning today, help to protect our citizens from violence.”
Airtel Nigeria’s CEO adds that the company is open to sharing insights with other telecoms operators and industry stakeholders. “I think we should protect Nigeria at this time,” Balsingh says. “If we are able to achieve that, I think we are doing something for Nigeria.”
He acknowledges that spammers will continue to find new ways to evade detection, but Airtel’s AI model will also continue learning and adapting. “Trust me, the spammer will see that the spam has dropped from this to this,” an Airtel official says. “Trust me, they will devise a new way. And the algorithm itself will also learn, right? And block it.”
Airtel’s early results suggest the system is already making a difference. Before the AI model was deployed, the company detected 7.7 million messages. Now, that number has dropped significantly. “I think now we’ve got about 2,500-3,000 spam messages coming on our network. It kind of crashed,” Balsingh says.
Airtel describes the initiative as “AI for the masses,” saying it is designed to help everyday users, from university students to security guards, avoid scams.
“We don’t want our customers to be affected by a potential spam,” Balsingh says. “We are warning our customers, we are protecting our customers, we are giving them an indication that this is probably spam.”
This initiative follows a similar move by Airtel in India, where in September 2024, the company introduced the country’s first network-based, AI-powered spam detection solution. That system processes 1 trillion records in real-time, flagging 100 million spam calls and 3 million SMS messages daily.
The service is free and automatically activated for all Airtel customers without requiring any app downloads. Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and CEO of Bharti Airtel, stated at the time, “Spam has become a menace for customers. We have spent the last twelve months to solve this comprehensively.”
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