Africa still needs to connect

  1. Posted on Wednesday 7 October 2009 - 09:31
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    Peter Griffiths, AfricaNews reporter in Johannesburg, South Africa
    4.6 billion mobile connections are expected worldwide by close of 2009 but Africa, the continent with the most potential for growth, lags horribly behind, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
    Mobile phone is everywhere in Libya...The 2 networks are owned by Khadafi sons... The favourite game of the libyans is to use their phone in the plane until it's too high to get some network! © Eric Lafforgue
    The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) compiled the research, saying that 600-million mobile connections would be added this year. The ITU also emphasized the growing importance of mobile communications after subscriptions surpassed fixed connections during 2008.

    Mobile growth has ballooned in developing nations. Operators in developing nations, countries which generally have poor fixed line connectivity and a general lack of infrastructure to support telecoms, have been attracted to mobile due to the speed with which they can extend connectivity.

    However, most of the growth has been in the Asian, Pacific and European markets, with the barrier to adoption in Africa mainly as a result of high prices, which are relatively as much as three times that of the second most expensive region - Asia and the Pacific.

    According to the report, “The cost of the ICT Price Basket represents 41 percent of [Africa’s] monthly average income.”

    South African operators frequently brag that they do not fall into the category of inhibiting the use of mobile technologies by charging high service fees after they successfully reached over 100 percent mobile penetration in 2008. However, this argument fails to recognize the incredibly low average usage, nor the fact that many South Africans use a different SIM for each network in order to escape the high charges for calling between networks, which artificially increase the penetration statistic.

    Currently Europe has 200 subscribers per 1000 inhabitants, while Africa has on average 1 per 1000.

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