S03 CAF 3 2021 Agenda C_Layout 1 17/08/2021 06:19 Page 10
Interviews
THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY
How telecoms changed Africa – and Africa changed telecoms
Photo: Wheere it all began. Three issues of Communications Africa from its first decade.
Communications Africa is 30 this year. We asked a number of players – both long-established and relatively recent entrants – what they thought had been the most significant developments in telecommunications or broadcasting in the African market since 1991 – or since their own entry into the market. Here’s what they had to say.
A
LOT HAS CHANGED in 30 years in Africa telecommunications. In the early 1990s a business visitor to, say, Ghana, would arrange an appointment by fax or even telex or try to get through on an unreliable fixed line service. If they were running late, there was no easy way to alert the people they were meeting – and certainly not from the back of a taxi. A thirty-year-old resident of Accra would barely recognise this description. He or she would probably be familiar with basic text and voice on mobile phones and, today might own one of a growing number of low-cost smartphones, on which they can now not only arrange meetings, but read the news, listen to music, watch streaming TV and access one of thousands of applications designed to make life easier or more fun. This wasn’t supposed to happen. As recently as 2003 the general view was that, with rural
10 Special Anniversary Issue 2021
populations of around 70%, a minority of Africa’s urban population able to afford telecoms and the need for carriers to continue to make money, a likely mobile penetration ceiling in Africa would be on or around 10%. The actual percentage of individuals who own a phone in the continent’s most populous country, Nigeria, is now over 50%. In many countries it’s higher – over 100% in South Africa and Morocco, for example. And Africa may have been late to the mobile communications party, but it can claim to have been a major innovator through mobile-phonebased money transfer services, payments and micro-financing. M-Pesa, launched in Kenya in 2007, was the first and is still the best-known brand in what is now a global trend. Fibre connectivity was largely left behind by mobile – but that may not be the case for much longer. The staggering growth of subsea cable networks with a landing point in Africa is now,
slowly, translating to fibre connectivity further inland, and of course satellite communications is doing even more, at ever lower cost, to connect the unconnected. In broadcasting, there’s been a revolution too. Countries like South Africa and Nigeria are now big players in the broadcast content market, supporting viewers who, more than ever, are using streaming services – and even watching TV on their phones. Clearly a lot has changed in the thirty years since Communications Africa first launched – and these observations are by no means comprehensive. As our thirtieth anniversary approached we wondered how best we could review developments in the African telecommunications market since 1991. The obvious answer was to ask the companies that have been part of those developments. Ericsson of course entered Africa in 1894 and,
www.communicationsafrica.com
