Business
Fiber-optics and Africa’s increasing internet access
While Africa’s growth in mobile and internet access has been rising faster over the last decade than any other region of the world, the continent is still playing catch-up. The continuing investment in infrastructure, dropping costs, rising incomes and demographics, however, will lead to a far greater growth over the next decade. It is early morning in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. The traffic jam along Ngong Road, one of the city’s main feeder roads, stretches for kilometers as matatus (taxis), buses and cars try to make their way into the central business district.
At the top floor of Bishop Magua Centre complex, sitting just off Ngong Road, Antony Njoroge is already at work, typing away at his computer, a mug of freshly brewed coffee beside him. He is the founder of RevWeb, a local software development company. Njoroge works out of iHub, a working space that hosts developers, designers and others working with technology software. It is one of the most well-known tech hubs in Africa.
In just four years since its founding, the iHub has over 13,000 members in its online and off-line community, held close to 500 events and had over 50 companies calling it home. The growth of iHub represents how information and communication technology (ICT) in Kenya has advanced over the past 15 years. This digital revolution started in 1999 with the entry into market of KenCell (later Zain, and now Bharti Airtel) and Safaricom mobile network operators.
In 2001, the Communication Commission of Kenya reported that the number of mobile phone subscribers had “increased to a staggering 330,000.” Looking back, that figure seems laughable; in 2013 the same commission reported 30 million subscribers. The scene is no different across Africa; mobile phone penetration has grown from 1 percent in 2000 to 54 percent in 2012. Today there are more than 754 million connections in sub-Saharan Africa and over 35 mobile network operators in Africa.
Several countries, such as Seychelles, Tunisia, Morocco and Ghana, have mobile subscription penetration rates in excess of 100%. Tunisia, at 120 percent, has 10.8 million more cell-phone connections than it has citizens. There is no doubt that mobile infrastructure has become as important to national economies as road or energy infrastructure.
Mobile Banking
Aside from providing voice and internet access, mobile networks in some African countries now facilitate more individual and small business financial transactions than the banking industry. Kenya’s M-pesa, a SMS-based money transfer system, moves over $24 million each day, about $8.8 billion annually, or 40 percent of the country’s GDP, within its 17 million strong user network.
EcoCash in Zimbabwe, run by Econet Wireless, signed up 2.3 million Zimbabweans in just 18 months after its launch in September 2011, outnumbering all of Zimbabwe’s traditional banking accounts combined. Over a million of these accounts are active and push about $200 million of volume over the EcoCash platform every month, according to the Global Strategic Marketing Alliance, a global consulting firm.
