According to Millicom, Deezer has more than 16 million active monthly users, 5 million subscribers and a catalogue of over 35 million tracks. The service will also offers a large list of locally produced content.

“There is a huge appetite for music in Africa and people increasingly want to choose where, when and to what they listen,” said Arthur Bastings, Millicom’s Executive Vice-President for Africa.

Bastings added that Tigo Music with Deezer gives Africans “the freedom to enjoy the passion and emotion of their music.”

Tigo will market and distribute the service to its growing smartphone population by bundling it with mobile data packs. The mobile operator added 500,000 people to its African user base in the past three months.

The telecommunications company will be hoping to build on the success of its partnership in Latin America where there are already over 600,000 Tigo Music subscribers.

With Music streaming regarded as the second most popular mobile phone feature in sub-Saharan Africa, where smartphone penetration is to grow 30 percent annually in the next five years, Millicom is expecting a high success rate of the partnership with Deezer.

“We are excited to be extending our partnership with Millicom and look forward to bringing our service to Tigo Music customers in Africa. The service will use Deezer’s personalised human recommendations and smart algorithm to give customers access to our 35 million track strong library on its mobile platform,” explained Cédric Diedrich, Deezer’s Head of Telecom Business Development.