Africa's mobile takes 52% leap

Africa's great leap in mobile telephony penetration is not about to go down. The conntinent's subscriber base grew by 51.82% in the last 12 months to become the world's fastest growing mobile market, a report by the EMC World Database has said. The report formed part of the official
statements to kickstart the 7th annual GSM Africa conference and exhibition ending in Cape Town, South Africa today.

Africa's growth is a sizeable one and well above the world average for the same period that stands at 22.45%. In all, the number of mobile phone users in Africa grew to 64.1 million from a previous 42.2 million as at last year. Mobile subscription is expected to reach 75.2 million by the beginning of 2005 and climb to 172 million at the turn of the decade (2009).

For a continent that ended the immediate past decades with fewer phones than in Tokyo, deployment of mobile networks aided by liberalisation and fast uptake of mobile services have enhanced access far higher than
critics had forseen in the 80s. Mobile penetration for the continent currently stands at 7.4%.

Africa's most populous country, Nigeria has remained top in the mobile revolution with four mobile networks growing national mobile subcription in less than three years to over 7 million to end years of extremely limited and costly access to telephone service.

But South Africa's telcos lead the continent in its mobile campaign with MTN and VOdacom, both South African, maintaining their postion as Africa's biggest networks.

Besides, South Africa remains the biggest mobile market with over 19,6 million mobile phone subscribers at the end of June 2004 to account for a 47.9% annual growth. Tne North Africa markets of Eqypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia combined account for some 29.4% of the continent subscribers.

But Nigeria's new market is regarded as second only to South Africa and
is expected to overtake this market (South Africa) by 2006.

GSM Africa conference and exhibition, organised by IBC Global Conference, is an annual event geared at harnessing the potentials of GSM
technology for the continent's good. "GSM Africa is the premier event that will ensure participants are part of the African telecom boom," said Ms Fiona Loud, marketing manager of IBC Global Conferences. Nigeria featured participants from VMobile, Globacom, MTN, and M-Tel. There were also reprentatives of the Nigerian Communications Commission.
 

 More…..

Back To Top