ABI Research has revealed that in In 3Q-2012, the 54 countries and 1.08 billion people in the African continent have accumulated 821 million subscriptions, up 16.9% year-on-year, resulting in a mobile subscription penetration of 76.4%. The first quarter of 2013 is predicted to see an 80% penetration. “While Western Europe languishes with barely positive overall growth quarter-on-quarter, Africa managed to generate 4.2% growth in the same period,” commented Marina Lu, research associate, ABI Research.
Mobile subscription are particularly crucial in this continent due to the reduced formal banking facilities. African countries are some of the most developed when it comes to mobile money services and companies like M-Pesa are hugely successful in this continent.
The top 5 players in Africa are MTN Nigeria (43.2m subscribers), Vodacom (37.7m), Vodafone Egypt (37.5m), MobiNil (32.4m) and MTN South Africa (23.5m).
But, despite the already high numbers, there is still a lot of room for growth. Given the fact that a significant percentage of prepaid users maintain more than one active prepaid subscription to minimize interconnection charges, there is still subscriber growth to be had. The mobile market in Africa is expected to grow to 1.12 billion by 2017, contributing 13.9% to take the global mobile market to 8.11 billion.
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