Technology is Africa’s greatest success story

Africa is a mobile-only continent. There never was a landline infrastructure to begin with, apart from isolated urban areas, and their maintenance wasn’t that good.

Mobile phones have allowed anyone to have a phone in places that were previously neglected and forgotten, thanks to the significant investments made in building backbone infrastructure and in rolling out 3G networks.

Internet services have experienced exponential growth in Africa: more than 720 million Africans have cell phones, about 167 million already use the Internet, and 52 million (and counting) are on Facebook.

This has allowed millions of Africans to connect to the Internet for the first time.

Declining prices of handsets and data and faster transmission speeds have placed many Africans on Facebook and Twitter and on cash transfer platforms.

CHANGING ROLES

Consumers in Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria are increasingly using video and media services on increasingly pocket-friendly smartphones.

Mobile services are also changing industry roles, improving sectors like agriculture, education, transportation and healthcare, as well as communications with government and local authorities while facilitating social improvements in most of sub-Saharan Africa.

Africans are also said to be among the most prolific Twitter users.

In early 2012, for example, it is reported that more than 11.5 million location-tagged tweets were shown to be originating in Africa.

Titled “How Africa Tweets”, the report indicated that South Africa has the most active Twitter population on the continent, tweeting twice as often as Kenya, the second-most active country.

Unlike the West, Africa is different in the way we use mobile phones. We use mobiles for online activities that others normally perform on laptops or desktop computers.

It is projected that, in five years, voice call traffic in sub-Saharan Africa will double and there will be an explosion in mobile data, with usage growing 20 times between 2013 and 2019, twice the anticipated global expansion.

An Ericsson forecast has predicted that by the end of this year, there will be over 635 million phone subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa. This is predicted to rise to about 930 million by the end of 2019.

In the next 10 years, the number of Internet-enabled phones used in Africa is projected to rise to 360 million, with Internet penetration rising sharply to around 50 percent.

ROSY NUMBERS

The increase in affordable smartphones in the mobile market will contribute to a rise in third-generation (3G) and fourth-generation (4G) technologies, with 75 per cent of mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa expected to be on 3G or 4G-enabled networks by 2019.

This means that scores of millions of Africans could come online in the next few years.

With these rosy numbers, Africa’s iGDP should grow to at least 5 to 6 per cent, matching that of leading economies like Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom, by 2025.

However, if the Internet achieves the same kind of scale and impact as the spread of mobile phones in Africa, iGDP could account for as much as 10 per cent, or $300 billion, of total GDP, while producing a leap forward in economic and social development.

Although a lot of ground has been gained, we still have a long way to go.

While Africa covers 6 percent of the Earth’s total surface area and 20 percent of the total land area with a population of 1 billion people, it represents only 7 per cent of the globe’s total Internet users — a market currently dominated by Asia.

We can catch up with these countries if only we resolve to focus on the main drivers of growth and shun unnecessary things that pulls us back.

Demographic trends—including urbanisation, rising incomes, and a huge generation of young, tech savvy Africans—will drive this growth. Numbers don’t lie.

Sam Wambugu is a monitoring and evaluation specialist. E-mail: [email protected]