LAGOS, Nigeria – Nokia today extends its Ovi Life Tools service to Africa, following successful launches in India, Indonesia and China. The subscription service provides users with health, agriculture, education and entertainment information and is designed to help improve users’ quality of life and prosperity.

The service will initially be available pre-installed on the Nokia 2690 and Nokia C1-01 devices. Working without the need for a data contract, the service uses SMS messages to bring users fresh information, presenting the content in a rich graphical format and organising it into folders through the software on the devices. The service will be available in English, Pidgin and Hausa.

The healthcare service include information and advice on mother & childcare, health, fitness and diseases. Users can tailor the service to their needs by entering their sex, age and other relevant details. The agriculture service allows subscribers to specify the crops or commodities they’re interested in, their location and the preferred language for messages. English learning can be provided in Easy, Medium and Difficult levels, according to the user’s proficiency. The entertainment services includes local and international football information (personalised around the subscriber’s favourite team), music, entertainment news and jokes.

Ovi Life Tools was originally launched in India and Indonesia last year, and then extended to China. Today, it has 6.3 million users across the three countries. In Nigeria the service will be offered through two of the country’s largest operators, Zain/Airtel and Glo Mobile, at the affordable price of NGN250 (€1.25) per month for the Agriculture service and NGN200 (€1) per month for all the other subscriptions. Nigeria has a population of 140 million, around half of which are mobile phone subscribers. It is one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies.

Dieter May, Nokia’s head of mobile phone services, said: “We are building on our commitment expressed at Nokia World to connect ALL people, including the next billion, we are uniquely placed to capture the rising potential in emerging markets. No other market player has the reach or the innovative services which can effectively be introduced into emerging markets. Let’s see where we go from here, watch this space!”