For App Publishers

Your Users Are
Already There

Global consumer apps get used across North Africa every day, in health, education, entertainment, dating, productivity, travel and gaming, very often with no official local presence at all. The blocker was never demand. It is that a card-on-file subscription screen excludes most of the population by design, and building local billing across six markets is a project no product roadmap wants to fund on spec.

The problem isn't demand. It's getting paid.

Credit card penetration is as low as roughly 10% in Egypt. Cash and cash-on-delivery still dominate everyday commerce across the region, and several currencies are not freely convertible. An app that only accepts cards is not competing badly in these markets. It is structurally unable to charge most of the people already using it. Mobile penetration, meanwhile, is high, and in some of these markets it exceeds 100%. Nearly every potential customer already has an active billing relationship with a mobile operator, and already tops up or pays a phone bill every month. The payment channel exists. It just isn't the one your checkout screen asks for.

You integrate nothing

Worth being unambiguous about, because it is the opposite of what most distribution conversations ask for: there is no SDK to embed, no API to call, and no app release required on your side. Clementine's SDK, REST API and white-label app are distributor-side products. They are how a telecom or retailer surfaces the catalogue to its customers, not something a publisher implements. What a publisher commits to is a commercial agreement and the assets needed to represent the product well in Arabic and French. That is the whole engineering ask, and it is deliberately zero, because requiring six carrier integrations to unlock a market of uncertain size is precisely why most global apps still have no North African presence.

What Clementine does on your behalf

One agreement, six markets, and the local work handled once and reused across the catalogue.
  • ▸Local billing. Carrier billing and mobile-money rails, so customers can pay through the channel they already use, without a card.
  • ▸Localisation support. Arabic and French, including full right-to-left presentation, rather than machine-translated strings bolted onto an English product.
  • ▸Distribution reach. Access to distributor partners such as telecoms, retailers, OEMs and app stores, who put the catalogue in front of their own customers.
  • ▸Local marketing. Regional positioning handled by people who work in these markets, not translated from a global campaign.

Categories the platform is built to carry

These are the kinds of apps the model fits. They illustrate what the platform is designed for and are not a client roster. Clementine is a new company at the pre-launch stage and has no signed publishers.
  • ▸Health and wellness, including telehealth, fitness and mental health
  • ▸Education and language learning
  • ▸Entertainment: video, music, podcasts
  • ▸Dating and social
  • ▸Mobility and delivery
  • ▸Productivity, security and consumer AI
  • ▸Travel and booking
  • ▸Kids and family safety
  • ▸Mobile gaming
  • ▸Out of scope: fintech, neobank and payment apps, and physical-goods e-commerce requiring customs-cleared shipping

The model is already proven, by other people

None of the following are Clementine's deals. They are public, independently reported precedents showing that this mechanism already works in this region. Anghami built MENA's leading music app on more than 35 telecom carrier-billing partnerships. Deezer entered the region through an operator route rather than building local payment infrastructure, and Spotify, which has more payments engineering resource than almost any competitor, enabled Orange Morocco carrier billing in 2023 rather than building an alternative. Altibbi, a telehealth platform, runs a live partnership with Libyana in Libya, which is the hardest market on the list and a category well outside entertainment. The pattern is consistent. The rails work, and each of these companies had to build their operator relationships one at a time to use them.

Common questions

Do we need to integrate an SDK or API?+
No. Publishers do no technical work. The SDK, REST API and white-label app are distributor-side products. They are how a telecom or retailer presents the catalogue to its customers, not something a publisher implements.
Which markets does one agreement cover?+
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania and Egypt. All six, through one relationship rather than six separate negotiations.
We already have organic users in the region. Does that help?+
It is the strongest possible starting position. Existing organic usage means the demand question is already answered and the remaining problem is purely payment and distribution, which is the part Clementine is built to solve.
Does Clementine have signed publishers today?+
No. Clementine is a new company at the pre-launch and early-partnership stage. The categories and precedents on this page describe what the platform is built for and what the industry has already proven. They are not existing Clementine relationships.

Tell us about your app

Company, product, category, and the markets you care about. We'll come back to you on what a North African launch would actually involve.

Bring your app to North AfricaSee the six markets

Related reading

Sources

Figures on this page are drawn from the public sources below. Companies and deals referenced are cited as third-party industry precedent — none is a Clementine client, partner or completed deal.