“AI is rapidly becoming an integral part of the daily internet experience, and we’re seeing a great interest in AI solutions among Africans, so bringing Aria to Opera Mini is a natural addition to our most-downloaded browser. With the integration of our built-in AI, Aria, we’re excited to

explore how AI can further enhance the feature set our users across Africa can rely on every day,” said Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile at Opera. 

Opera Mini is known and appreciated for numerous unique features – from live football scores to the built-in digital wallet MiniPay, and now – also Aria. 

Addressing data costs – a priority for users across Africa

While internet access is becoming increasingly more available on the continent, nearly 60% of people in Africa still don’t have web access. Moreover, the cost of the internet is disproportionately high compared to income or GDP per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to Opera surveys from March 2025, 59% of Nigerians and 80% of South Africans said data is too expensive, and more than half (55% Nigerians and 69% South Africans) reported regularly running out of data before the end of the month: data consumption remains a key concern. 

For years, Opera Mini has played a key role in enabling internet access across the region. Opera Mini’s turbo data-saving mode can reduce data usage by up to 90% compared to other major browsers. For the past three years, Opera has saved Nigerians an equivalent of $27M (60M GB) and South Africans an equivalent of $10M (6M GB) in data through this unique data compression technology. The free data campaigns**, active since 2020, allow Opera Mini users across Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya to benefit from up to 3GB each month for free, which can be used for anything, including interacting with Aria. Since 2022, Opera has invested millions of dollars in free data campaigns, bridging the digital divide and ensuring information access.

With Aria integrated into Opera Mini, users get the benefits of an advanced AI tool without sacrificing precious data. Aria is optimized for minimal data consumption and is included within Opera’s free daily data bundles — making it an ideal solution for the 46% of Nigerians and 69% of South Africans who said they would use AI tools only if they didn’t add to data usage. 

Aria – Opera’s native built-in AI

Aria browser AI integrates into Opera’s browsers on both desktop and mobile to enable an accessible chat-based interface to AI. It enhances user interaction through information retrieval, text or code generation, image generation and understanding. Aria is powered by Opera’s own Composer AI engine, which utilizes both OpenAI and Google AI technologies to provide the most relevant answers, and it integrates image generation through Google’s Imagen3 fast model. With today’s update, Aria is now available across all Opera browsers. For the 47% of Nigerians and 24% of South Africans surveyed who already use AI tools several times a day, and for the 67% of Nigerians and 59% of South Africans who rely on AI for academic purposes, Aria within Opera Mini offers a way to make those experiences even more accessible and fully affordable, as it’s free. There are more exciting and unique features coming to Opera Mini soon – and some of those are being built for football fans across Africa! 

To use Aria in Opera Mini, download or update via Google Play Store.

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of Opera.