Mr Musheg Sahakian, the Global Expansion Director for Yango, has said the ride-hailing service has achieved its global expansion success via the use of technology.

Speaking at Russia-Africa Summit and Forum, Mr Sahakian said the service is currently operational in 18 countries, including Ghana and Ivory Coast and has engaged over 700,000 drivers, who are working with the service on an active basis.

"Thanks to our technologies, drivers and partners benefit a lot - only in Russia, during the last two years they earned over 5 billion USD," he said in a statement made available to the Ghana News Agency.

Russia is hosting the Russia-Africa Summit and Forum which has in attendance President Vladimir Putin as well as high representatives of all African countries, including President Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana and other officials.

In his opening speech on Mr Putin cited Yandex, the parent company of Yango, for bringing up-to-date intelligent technologies from Russia to Africa.

Mr Sahakian said good earnings for drivers together with affordable prices and high-quality service for users have been made possible due to the unique Yandex ecosystem of services (Search, Maps, Navigations, Artificial Intelligence, Voice Assistant and 90 others), which distinguishes it from its competitors.

"Russia is going back to Africa with a high-tech product. The quality of our IT solutions is seen in the fact that Russia is the only market where domestic internet services compete successfully with major global players in open competition," said Mr Sahakian.

Mr Sahakian spoke about Yandex's self-driving cars which are currently being tested in several countries and has already made 1,000,000 miles of driverless rides.

These are 'ideal drivers': they never get tired or need to sleep, they obey rules and self-learn over millions of hours of driving experience. And while the future is coming, and cars still need drivers, Yango pays great attention to the safety and security of rides.

Yango's technologies can automatically track speed and driving behavior can check how long a driver has been behind the wheel, automatically ban policy violators from the system, and even conduct technical and visual vehicle inspections. What's more, Yango's own cameras can track a driver's fatigue and attention analyzing their mimics and eye movement in a real-time mode.

"To sum things up, I want to just say again that we are focused on and care about Africa. We see a continent with tremendous potential and a great will to working with Russian companies. Here's to hoping this forum will help all of us start an even more productive dialogue," said Mr Sahakian.