MTN, Etisalat, Airtel, Globacom and other mobile telecommunications companies operating in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have invested more than $45 billion over the last six years to expand coverage and increase network capacity, adding 329 million unique mobile subscribers as at June 2014, which is equivalent to 38 per cent of the region’s total population.
The sub-Saharan Africa region includes 46 countries in total with the six largest markets in order of size being Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Repulic of Congo and Tanzania, which together account for over half of the region’s unique mobile subscribers’ base.
The capital expenditure of these networks will rise to $97 billion by 2020 as the operators accelerate investments in order to meet rising demand for mobile data services.
According to the GSM Association, this unique subscribers’ base is forecast to grow by seven per cent per year (CAGR) to 2020 to reach just over half a billion and account for 49 per cent of the population. By this point, sub-Saharan Africa will have overtaken Europe to become the world’s second-largest mobile market after Asia Pacific.
The director-general of the GSMA, Anne Bouverot, said, “The mobile industry has transformed the lives of millions of people across the sub-Saharan Africa, providing not just connectivity but also an essential gateway to a wide range of healthcare, education and financial services.”
The number of mobile connections in the region stood at 608 million in June 2014, forecast to rise to 975 million by 2020. The region is seeing a rapid migration to mobile broadband networks; 3G accounted for only 17 per cent of total connections in June 2014, but is forecast to account for more than half of the total by 2020 as local operators deploy new mobile broadband networks and smartphones become more affordable.
According to ‘Mobile Economy 2014: Sub-Saharan Africa,’ a new GSMA report issued at the Mobile 360-Africa event in Cape Town, South Africa, last week, in 2013, the mobile industry contributed 5.4 per cent to overall gross domestic product (GDP) in the region, equivalent to $75 billion. This included a direct contribution by mobile operators of $27 billion or 1.9 per cent of GDP.
