Mobile technology in Africa

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Signs and ads from Celtel and other mobile telephony operators are ubiquitous in rural Africa (picture: Uganda 2009) Celtel shop uganda.jpg
Signs and ads from Celtel and other mobile telephony operators are ubiquitous in rural Africa (picture: Uganda 2009)

Mobile technology in Africa is a fast growing market. [1] Nowhere is the effect more dramatic than in Africa, where mobile technology often represents the first modern infrastructure of any kind. [2] Over 10% of Internet users are in Africa. [3] However, 50% of Africans have mobile phones and their penetration is expanding rapidly. [4] This means that mobile technology is the largest platform in Africa, and can access a wide range of income groups. AppsAfrica reports Mobile App downloads has surpassed 98 billion [5] which is a very huge benefit for mobile app developers in Africa

Contents

As a consequence of the wider availability of mobile telephony with respect to fixed telephony, in many African countries, most Internet traffic goes through the mobile network. An example is Seychelles, that is the African country with a larger percentage of Internet subscribers, where most Internet users access the net through the mobile network. [6]

Growth of mobile telephony in the 2000s

Several factors contributed to the "boom" of mobile telephony in Africa in the 2000s.

Limitations of African PSTNs

An MTN-operated "mobile phone booth" (Uganda 2009) Public telephone uganda.jpg
An MTN-operated "mobile phone booth" (Uganda 2009)

A major success factor of mobile telephony in Africa is the scarce diffusion of PSTNs (fixed line networks). In 2000, Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole had fewer telephone lines than Manhattan alone. Fixed line networks hardly reach the remote rural areas where a relevant percentage of the African population lives. Of about 400.000 rural settlements that are estimated to exist in Africa, less than 3% have PSTN access. Mobile telephony providers have taken advantage of this situation, implementing a very aggressive diffusion strategy for mobile networks. In 2006, 45% of rural settlements in Africa had GSM coverage. More recently, coverage has reached 90% of the territory in several countries, including Comoros, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, and Uganda. Other countries that in 2007 reached above 50% of GSM coverage are Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Guinea, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Swaziland, and Togo. [6] As a consequence of the larger diffusion of GSM networks over fixed line networks, "mobile-telephone booths" are common in some areas of Africa.

The fixed line market in Africa is generally based on monopoly (often state monopoly), with a few number of incumbent operators who did not invest in spreading their networks much farther than the larger urban areas. While this situation is changing (for example, both Telkom Kenya and Botswana Telecommunications Corporation have recently been privatized, and a market liberalization strategy has been initiated in several countries [6] ), the mobile telephony market is generally more competitive and dynamic. [6]

The table below outlines the percentage of African countries where telecommunications markets (fixed line telephony, mobile telephony, Internet) are fully competitive, partially competitive, or monopolistic, either de iure or de facto (data refer to 2007). [6]

InternetMobileFixed line
Monopolistic10955
Partially competitive124123
Fully competitive694325

Market strategies

LTE cell towers in Pretoria, South Africa Voorstedelike telekommunikasietorings, Moreleta Park, a.jpg
LTE cell towers in Pretoria, South Africa

Mobile telephony providers that introduced mobile telephony in Africa in the 2000s adopted business models explicitly designed to reach the poorest (and largest) section of the population, with low-priced mobile phones and small denomination prepaid cards. [6]

Another key success factor in the providers' strategy in Africa has been the cutting down of roaming costs. This is especially relevant in Africa since strong relationships often hold between neighbouring communities that happen to be separated by national borders. [6] Celtel was the first operator to provide free roaming with the 2006 One Network campaign, whereby roaming became free between Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. In 2007 this has been extended to Gabon, DR Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan. [7] After Celtel, other providers operating in African markets have announced their intent to gradually reduce and eventually abolish roaming costs for certain areas.

Orange Guinée builds off-grid sites that improve the cell network using masts powered by photovoltaic panels, expanding coverage in rural areas and strengthening coverage in urban areas . This is being financed with a $30 million loan from the European Investment Bank. These solar-powered cell telecommunications a ntennae will slash grid fuel usage by more than 80%. [8] [9]

Non-profit mobile technology

5G Cell Tower in Johannesburg, South Africa 5G Cell Tower in Johannesburg.jpg
5G Cell Tower in Johannesburg, South Africa

Mobile technology can be used, not only to generate profit from high income groups, but to provide information and create social change for low income groups. For example, mobile technology is used to provide information on health, education, finances or to access specific groups such as the youth. However, people who are very poor have very basic phones. Thus non-profit mobile technology is not aimed at advanced smart phones, but ranges from sending out bulk SMSs to USSD, mobi-sites and mobile communities. AppsAfrica [10] writes the next 1 Billion phone users will come from Rural areas

The ultimate aim of non-profit mobile technology is to make it free, or as near to free, for the end user. This means enlisting donors and getting mobile networks on board. Internationally, companies such as TextToChange, FrontlineSMS, RapidSMS, Ushahidi all work with mobiles in health, disaster relief and aid management.

Promote health

mHealth is using mobile technology to provide groups with health information. It was pioneered in part by the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation through partnerships with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the social enterprise DataDyne, who then joined with other partners in forging the mHealth Alliance. [11] mHealth activities come in the form of appointment reminders, community mobilization and health promotion, emergency toll-free telephone services, health call centres, health surveys, information initiatives and patient monitoring among others. [12]

In June 2011, the first African mobile health summit was held in Cape Town. At the summit, the WHO released a report stating that eighty-three per cent of governments surveyed had at least one mHealth project in their country. However, the majority of mHealth activities were limited in size and scope. mHealth initiatives were health call centres (59%), emergency toll-free telephone services (55%), managing emergencies and disasters (54%), and mobile telemedicine (49%).

In South Africa, companies like Cell-Life and GeoMed and HealthSMS use mobile technology for health. [13]

Fight HIV/Aids

The Praekelt Foundation is a South African example of a non profit organisation that is using mobile technology to create social change. Their programmes have currently reached 50 million people across 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. [14]

The founders saw that the technology they were creating for corporate clients could be useful for NGOs to provide information to their target markets. “Full profit want to reach people for different reasons, but people should not be charged for having access to life saving information,” says Marcha Neethling, head of operations at Praekelt Foundation.

One of the mobile technologies developed by Praekelt Foundation is a mobile community called YoungAfricaLive (YAL). Users do not need to have airtime or data bundles on their phones to use it. The aim of the mobile community was to create a space that would be interactive and fun where young people could talk candidly and learn about love, relationships and sex and HIV/AIDS. [14]

The mobile community is unique to the Vodacom network. At the end of 2010, Vodacom’s mobile platform, Vodafone Live, was receiving 3.2 million unique users monthly. [15] As (young) people were already using mobile technology to surf the net and download songs etc. it seemed the perfect place to engage with this target group.

The community is aimed at users between 16 and 24 and users receive daily news and celeb stories. All with a social call to action at the end, they participate in polls, watch videos that link to stories and can engage in anonymous chat rooms. Experts come on to the chat rooms to discuss sexual topics and allow users to ask personal questions anonymously. For example, well known South African sexologist Dr Eve hosts live chats once a week.

Users have engaged with the community and many of the updated features of the community have come directly from user suggestions. Users have commented saying YoungAfricaLive creates a platform for them to express their ideas, making them proud of their status and encouraging them to be responsible around sex.

The ongoing challenge with free mobile communities and technology is continuing to engage the service provider to allow the community to be entirely free. “With YoungAfricaLive South Africa, Vodacom is sponsoring the bandwidth, which is a massive investment. .. (thus) sustainability is always a question.” [16]

Community crime fighting

In 2011 Vodacom pioneered a project in South Africa to fight crime using mobile phones. [17] They partnered with The Khulisa's Youth out of School Ubuntu Club in Tembisa, Johannesburg and donated a computer and seven mobile phones to the Club. These are used by the young patrollers in the community to keep in touch and to report all crime incidents, as well as update the community on current events.

The project is based in the Phomolong area of Tembisa, which is notorious for high levels of criminal activity. Each mobile phone donated has internet capabilities and the members of the Club will be allocated a mobile phone that they will use to capture events, interview members of the community and create video clips. These will be uploaded to their Facebook page and website all in an effort to report on criminal activity in the community.

The South African Police Service also runs a national crime line which they encourage citizens to SMS in and report crimes in their communities.

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">GSM</span> Cellular telephone network standard

The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. GSM is also a trade mark owned by the GSM Association. GSM may also refer to the Full Rate voice codec.

Telecommunications in Poland include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telecommunications in South Africa</span> Overview of telecommunications in South Africa

Telecommunications infrastructure in South Africa provides modern and efficient service to urban areas, including cellular and internet services. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) is the watchdog of the telecommunications in the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roaming</span> Wireless telecommunication term

Roaming is a wireless telecommunication term typically used with mobile devices, such as mobile phones. It refers to a mobile phone being used outside the range of its native network and connecting to another available cell network.

Telkom SA SOC Limited is a South African wireline and wireless telecommunications provider, operating in more than 38 countries across the African continent. Telkom is majority state-owned (55.3%) with the South African government owning 40.5% of Telkom, while another 14.8% is owned by another state-owned company - the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which is closely linked to the South African government.

GSM services are a standard collection of applications and features available over the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) to mobile phone subscribers all over the world. The GSM standards are defined by the 3GPP collaboration and implemented in hardware and software by equipment manufacturers and mobile phone operators. The common standard makes it possible to use the same phones with different companies' services, or even roam into different countries. GSM is the world's most dominant mobile phone standard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile telephony</span> Provision of telephone services to phones

Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to mobile phones rather than fixed-location phones. Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the line may blur.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, academic Andreas Kaplan defines mobile marketing as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobitel (Slovenia)</span>

Mobitel was a Slovenian GSM/UMTS/LTE mobile operator. The company merged with Telekom Slovenije in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SLTMobitel</span>

Sri Lanka Telecom PLC, doing business as SLT-MOBITEL, is the national telecommunications services provider in Sri Lanka and one of the country's largest companies with an annual turnover in excess of Rs 40 billion. The company provides domestic and corporate services which include fixed and wireless telephony, Internet access and IT services to domestic, public and business sector customers. As of 2018 SLT-MOBITEL was Sri Lanka's second largest mobile network operator with over 7.9 million subscribers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orange Moldova</span> Moldova internet provider and mobile network

Orange Moldova is a subsidiary of Orange S.A. operating in Moldova since April 1998. The company is also an internet service provider and fixed voice services (point-to-point) provider for business.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet in South Africa</span> Overview of the Internet in South Africa

The Internet in South Africa, one of the most technologically resourced countries on the African continent, is expanding. The internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .za is managed and regulated by the .za Domain Name Authority (.ZADNA) and was granted to South Africa by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1990. Over 60% of Internet traffic generated on the African continent originates from South Africa. As of 2020, 41.5 million people were Internet users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vodacom Tanzania</span>

Vodacom Tanzania Limited is Tanzania's leading cellular network company. As of December 2020, Vodacom Tanzania had over 15.6 million customers and was the largest wireless telecommunications network in Tanzania. Vodacom Tanzania is the second telecom company in Africa, after Vodacom, to switch on its 3G High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) which was available only in Dar Es Salaam in early 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Airtel Tanzania</span>

Airtel Tanzania Limited is the third-largest mobile network operator in Tanzania operated by Airtel Africa, which is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel of India, behind Vodacom Tanzania and Tigo Tanzania. As of September 2017, Airtel Tanzania had 10.6 million voice subscribers. As of December 2017 according to data provided by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority, Airtel Tanzania controlled 27.1 percent of Tanzania's mobile telephone market by customer numbers, at that time estimated at 10.86 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emtel</span>

Emtel Ltd. is a telecommunications company based in Ebene City, Mauritius. Launched on 29 May 1989 – Emtel Ltd became the first mobile telephony operator in the Southern Hemisphere. This took place under the aegis of The Currimjee Jeewanjee Group. Since 27 April 2015, Emtel holds a partnership with Airtel, Indian provider of prepaid & postpaid, wireless internet, broadband, fixed line, digital TV and mobile services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile phone</span> Portable device to make telephone calls using a radio link

A mobile phone is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area, as opposed to a fixed-location phone. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and therefore mobile telephones are called cellphones in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messagIng, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications, satellite access, business applications, video games and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only basic capabilities are known as feature phones; mobile phones which offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MagtiCom</span>

MagtiCom, Ltd was founded on February 12, 1996 by Dr. George (Gia) Jokhtaberidze. On September 22, 1997 the Company made the first commercial call from its mobile network. The services offered by MagtiCom involve as follows: mobile telephony; mobile internet ; Cable fixed telephony (VoIP); internet television (IPTV) and fiber-optic internet. Since 2016 MagtiCom started to provide IPTV, VoIP and fiber-optic internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hormuud Telecom</span> Somalian telecommunications company

Hormuud Telecom Somalia Inc. is a privately held telecommunications company based in Mogadishu, Somalia. It is the largest telecommunication company and largest private-sector employer in the country, and also Somalia's first private enterprise to be internationally ISO certified.

References

  1. ↑ "MIT Global Startup Labs". aiti.mit.edu. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
  2. ↑ "Terms of Service Violation". www.businessweek.com. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
  3. ↑ "Africa Internet Users, 2018 Population and Facebook Statistics". www.internetworldstats.com. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
  4. ↑ "2010 Global Mobile Communications - Key Trends and Growth in a Challenging Environment - BuddeComm". www.budde.com.au. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
  5. ↑ "Mobile App downloads will reach 98 billion". Archived from the original on 2012-01-23. Retrieved 2012-02-04.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 See ITU (2007)
  7. ↑ See Reuters (2007)
  8. ↑ "Onsite solar and storage powers off-grid telecom towers". Energy Post. 2019-03-19. Retrieved 2021-04-16.
  9. ↑ "How digitalisation fights COVID-19 and climate change in Africa". European Investment Bank. Retrieved 2021-04-16.
  10. ↑ "/ details the next 1 Billion phone users will come from Rural areas". Archived from the original on 2012-02-24. Retrieved 2012-02-04.
  11. ↑ "United Nations Foundation » Mobilizing Development". Archived from the original on 2011-07-02. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  12. ↑ "Welcome to mHealth Knowledge | www.mhealthknowledge.org". www.mhealthalliance.org. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
  13. ↑ "Mobile Health for Development". United Nations Foundation. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
  14. 1 2 "Home". Praekelt.org. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
  15. ↑ "Habarimedia.co.za".
  16. ↑ South African sexologist Dr Eve
  17. ↑ "Vodacom - Vodacom Group". Archived from the original on 2013-02-05. Retrieved 2011-06-27.

Bibliography

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