Over the past decade, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a region formed by 471 diverse countries with a combined population of over 830 million, has experienced significant economic growth. The region includes seven of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world.
Governments in SSA have successfully liberalised the telecommunications sector, and competition has increased service affordability. This has generated a remarkable rate of growth in the mobile market across the region, the highest worldwide.
Since 2000, the number of connections in SSA has grown by 44%, compared to an average of 34% for developing regions and 10% for developed regions as a whole. Mirroring the region’s economic expansion, growth in mobile can reasonably be expected to continue in the medium term.
Operators in five key SSA markets (Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana) invested US$16.5 billion over the past five years and US$2.8 billion in 2011. Most of this investment has been focused on expanding network capacity, increasing the number of base stations in these five countries by 250% between 2007 and 2012.
This investment is critical to the citizens of SSA, as mobile services effectively provide all forms of telecommunications, to an extent not seen in any other part of the world. In SSA in 2010, there were 28 mobile connections for each fixed line subscription.
Mobile penetration has increased rapidly in the last 12 years in the region, from just 1% in 2000 to 54% in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate of over 36%. Today there are more than 454 million connections in SSA
