Cell Phones: Africa Excluded

It has been said that developing countries (mainly in Africa), are being left behind in the mobile market industry. I explore this myth. A report was published this year on http://www.marketresearch.com entitled "2008 Global Mobile Communications- Statistics, Trends and Forecasts" by Paul Budde Communication Pty Ltd. This report was interesting to me because it gave some statistics in the mobile phone market and it showed some important social implications. These were the stats for the whole world:

• The report stated that in 2008, there are 3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide.
• Prepaid mobiles now account for more than 60% of worldwide mobile subscribers.
• The total number of fixed phone lines is increasing but wireless lines are growing even faster, with the majority of all voice calls originating from mobile phones worldwide.

The Internet site http://www.budde.com produced the following interesting mobile market information for Africa:

• There are now more than a quarter of a billion mobile subscribers in Africa.
• Mobile phones represent around 90% of all telephone lines in Africa.
• The mobile market in Africa is growing between 50-60% every year.
• Due to Africa's poor fixed-line infrastructure, the mobile networks are the best provider's of Internet service provision.
• Mobile phone penetration in South Africa is approaching 90%!

These short statistics show that cell phones are playing a dominate role in telecommunications worldwide and even in Africa. These stats also show that 9 out of 10 people in South Africa own a cell phone! These stats show that many Africans are gaining access to the Internet via their phones.

The social implications are that if the 50-60% growth persists in the African mobile market we may catch up to the rest of the world and not be excluded after all.