African Mobile Factbook

White African has an extensive breakdown of the "African Moble Factbook" report for 2007. The end of the year figures show a 30.4% growth in phone subscribers across the continent bringing the number to 280.7 million. This is still a small number given the continent's population of about 800 million - approximately 1/4. However what is not shown and more difficult to ascertain is the number of users per mobile phone which could possibly double or even treble the numbers. One thing I noticed in Nigeria was the high cost of calls relative to incomes plus of course the problem of charging phones due to the very poor electricity service across the country.

Some of the highlights are:

Interesting Facts

• Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt are the fastest growing markets
• Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 100% to 30%
• Pre-paid subscriptions account for nearly 95 percent of total mobile subscriptions in the region
• Most of the mobile operators are home-grown. In 2005, the continent’s seven largest investors controlled 53% of the African mobile market
• Across most of Africa, SMS is likely to be the only non-voice value-added service to gain mass market popularity in the immediate future
• East Africans pay taxes of between 25% and 30% on mobile phone services, compared with an average of 17% across Africa
• African states with less than 600,000 subscribers and includes Burundi, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Comoros (Union of the), Djibouti, Equitorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gambia (The), Lesotho, Liberia, Mayotte, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Somalia, Swaziland and Rwanda.

The report can be downloaded for free here.