The line of thinking seems to be: Africa and Asia leapfrogged the desktop / laptop generation of computing and directly went for mobile. The younger generation in the Western world essentially is mobile-first. Apart from work (and even that might change for many job descriptions in the future) even most people in traditionally first-world countries don't even use desktop computers anymore. Hence, what we see in Africa and Asia right now essentially also is the future for Western countries.
In general, I think this is spot on. However, I also think many people get overly excited by the promises and possibilities of messaging apps. SMS-based apps in particular often are makeshift solutions for when there's no reliable Internet connectivity all the time but somewhat reliable cellular coverage.
The bus information example is a particularly good example of this. Sure, it's useful but many of the improvements mentioned in the article like linking to a specific resource for a specific bus line for easier future use can already be implemented today in websites. There's no reason why I couldn't use a mobile browser instead of a message app for accessing this kind of information. The problem is that most websites - public transport websites being a particularly notorious example - often are terrible from a UX point of view: User interfaces are needlessly complex and often barely usable at all.
Perhaps, the takeaway from this article also is that when designing websites and web-based UX we can learn a lot from the simpler interactions on mobile devices. Good design is all about embracing constraints. Perhaps applying those constraints from mobile messaging to designing websites is a good idea, too.