New ITU Report Documents the African ICT Century

Johannesburg, 11 November 2001 — The year 2000 was a momentous one in the African telecommunications calendar, because that was the year all countries on the continent became connected to the Internet and that sub-Saharan Africa passed the threshold of one telephone subscriber per 100 inhabitants. The problem in Africa is not only the lack of infrastructure, but also, increasingly, affordability and the "Internetization" of its wireless networks.

A new report released by the ITU’s Telecommunication Data and Statistics Unit at ITU Telecom Africa 2001 shows that while the truism "Tokyo has more telephones than the whole of the African continent" may have held 15 years ago, today, there are more than twice as many telephone lines in Africa as in Tokyo. The rapid penetration of mobile cellular technology also updates the conventional logic that "all mankind should be brought within easy reach of a telephone by the early part of (this) century" as now, it is conceivable that within a few years, the majority of African citizens will be within range of a mobile signal. Indeed, the ITU report estimates that before the end of 2001, there will be more mobile than fixed subscribers on the whole continent.

The growth in total number of telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants from 0.51 to 1.2 from 1995 to 2000 follows the upswing in the African economy and expansion of competitive operators on the continent. However, another contributor is the marriage of mobile cellular and pre-paid cards. Indeed, a growing number of African mobile networks are only pre-paid, while on the continent as a whole, four out of every five subscribers use pre-paid: almost twice the global average.

To come to grips with an increasingly globalizing telecommunications market, the report makes the following recommendations:

• A more aggressive rollout of wireless local loop and fixed wireless broadband networks to help alleviate fixed network shortages and enhance Internet access
• Extending the convenience and affordability of the pre-paid model to conventional phones lines and internet access
• Extending competition to fixed market segments to encourage full service licenses to new operators
• Pooling of Internet bandwidth requirements to create economies of scale with other countries and sharing of backbone infrastructure by operators.

The report contains useful data on Africa such as breakdowns of the fixed, mobile and Internet market, in north, South and sub-Saharan Africa; growth in penetration of phones, growth in subscribers, growth of mobile competition; percentage of mobile to total telephone subscribers, pre-paid as a percentage of total mobile subscribers; mobile cellular prices; Internet access prices; distribution of Internet users; distribution of international Internet bandwidth and Internet penetration.

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