Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development Festus Keyamo has approved the design of a proposed monorail to link Ikeja Railway Station in Lagos to Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in the state.

The project is expected to connect the airport to the Lagos Red Line rail network, providing passengers and other airport users with an alternative to road transport.

Mr Keyamo announced the approval on Tuesday after a meeting with the managing director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Aviation and engineering teams from the ministry and FAAN.

In a post on X, the minister said the proposed line will have five stations, running from Ikeja Railway Station to the international airport’s Terminal 1, which is currently undergoing reconstruction.

He listed the proposed stations/stops as Ikeja Station, Domestic Airport Station, Beesam Station, Toll Gate Station and MMIA Airport Station.

“The monorail is an integral part of the reconstruction of the nation’s major gateway at the MMIA in Lagos,” Mr Keyamo said.

The design approval follows earlier announcements by the Federal Government about plans to extend rail services from Ikeja to the airport’s domestic and international terminals.

In June, PREMIUM TIMES reported that the government was working with the Lagos State Government to extend the existing rail network to the airport and to expand connectivity.

Recently, Olubunmi Onabanjo-KukuFAAN’she managing directAN, said talks on financing the planned airport rail lint had reached an advanced stage.

Speaking at the World Aviation Festival in Lisbon, Portugal, on 18 October, Ms Onabanjo-Kuku stated that efforts were ongoing to finalise the project’s financing structure.

The planned link is expected to connect the airport’s three terminals to the Red Line as part of its wider modernisation programme.

The proposed rail connection forms part of broader efforts to upgrade facilities at the Lagos airport and improve passenger movement.

Terminal 1 of the international airport is undergoing reconstruction, while other infrastructure upgrades are intended to boost airport operations and the passenger experience.

The airport serves as a major gateway for international travel to and from Nigeria, making access to its terminals crucial for passengers and other users.

Meta’s AI companion, Muse, is now one of only a dozen mobile apps to have reached 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days on the market. According to new data from market intelligence provider Sensor Tower, Muse has seen 10.9 million downloads since its September debut, 10.2 million of which were in the United States.

Only 11 other apps to date have reached this type of post-launch milestone, said Sensor Tower’s Senior Insights Analyst Kara Lee. The most recent of these was Meta’s Threads, back in July 2023. Other apps that saw this kind of scale were largely mobile games, Lee noted.

Meta’s success is tied to the company’s ability to scale its new apps by marketing them across its other services, which it has done with both Threads and Muse. Threads was built on top of Instagram’s social graph, and its content has been integrated into both Facebook and Instagram. However, Muse isn’t only benefiting from Meta’s ability to market the AI agent across its family of apps, which today includes 3.6 billion daily active users; the company is also heavily investing in advertising to drive new users to Muse.

Per Sensor Tower’s data, Meta has allocated 39% of its total advertising spend to market Muse in October, up from 23% last month. In addition, Muse now ranks as the 21st largest brand in the U.S. by advertising impressions this month, up from 73rd in September.

Still, marketing an app and retaining users after the initial shine wears off are two different things. In this case, Muse is seeing better retention rates than its AI competitors like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok.

In the U.S., the app had a 30% retention rate after 7 days and a 23% retention rate after 14 days. By comparison, its rivals saw an average of a 19% 7-day retention rate and a 16% 14-day retention rate, according to the firm’s data.

Muse also hit another milestone that demonstrates active engagement with the AI app. Its daily active users reached 2.5 million for the first time on October 16, a 15% week-over-week increase.

Meta’s latest AI app, which can handle various tasks on users’ behalf, has seen breakout success since its debut. It shot up to No. 1 on the App Store, and, at one point, even outpaced some of the metrics ChatGPT saw following its launch. Its latest milestone sees it topping its rivals again, as ChatGPT saw 3.7 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days on the market. Grok and Claude saw only 500,000 and 200,000 U.S. downloads, respectively, in their first 40 days.

Globally, ChatGPT beat out Muse, having scaled to around 15 million global downloads in its first 40 days. But this isn’t a fair comparison, as ChatGPT benefited from a wider reach. Muse is only available in the U.S. and Canada for now, while ChatGPT’s app attracted attention from markets like Japan, Brazil, and Germany, too. (Japan, for instance, accounted for 25% of its global installs during its first 40 days.)

Since launching, Muse has retained its No. 1 rank on the U.S. App Store for all days except October 19, when streaming app Kick briefly beat it out. It has since reclaimed the top spot as of Tuesday. Muse has also been No. 1 on Google Play over the past 30 days.