Africa - more mobile phones

Seventy million more Africans now connected to GSM networks

The GSMA, the global trade body for the mobile industry, announced today that the number of mobile connections in Africa has risen 70 million in the past 12 months to 282 million.

Mobile operators have ramped up investment in the region extending GSM coverage to reach an additional 550,000 square kilometres occupied by 46 million people. The broadening coverage and the falling cost of mobile communications is enabling tens of millions of Africans to become connected for the first time in their lives. Africa has only 35 million fixed-lines.

“Africa’s mobile industry is delivering on its promise to blanket the continent’s inhabitants with coverage giving tens of thousands of rural communities their first opportunity to realise the substantial social and economic benefits of mobile communications,” said Tom Phillips, Chief Government & Regulatory Affairs Officer of the GSMA, speaking at the ITU Telecom Africa event in Cairo.

“However, over 300 million rural Africans do not yet have mobile coverage. They live in an area the size of China, India and the USA combined. Developing sustainable business models to serve these communities is a great challenge, which requires the mobile industry and African governments to work together.”

At the ITU’s Connect Africa summit in Kigali in October, the GSMA announced that mobile operators plan to invest more than $50bn in sub-Saharan Africa over the next five years to provide more than 90% of the population with mobile coverage. To realise the full social and economic benefits of this investment, African governments need to ensure that sufficient spectrum is available, particularly for mobile broadband services. Governments also need to tackle mobile-specific taxes, high license fees, international gateway monopolies and other regulatory bottlenecks that constrain the competitiveness of African business.