The risk and the potential successes of African Mobile

Details: Michael Schwartz; Category: Trends & Forecasts; 16 March 2007; 7100 views

Investing in African mobile, despite its success in the last few years, still poses challenges to the unprepared. Called simply Mobile Africa, the latest report from Research and Markets looks at a highly exciting trend over the next five years. Economic, social and financial consequences are analysed for 51 African countries... Research and Markets has announced the addition of the BroadGroup report Mobile Africa to its existing range of reports. Africa Mobile is not just a technical report but also offers an overview of the economic, social and financial consequences of the boom in mobile phone ownership cascading across the continent.

What is included is a forecast of subscriber growth for over 50 countries in Africa for the five-year period from 2006 to 2011. Underpinning the forecasts are country profiles (and score-card assessments) of the 51 main countries in Africa accompanied by profiles of the main and emerging Pan-African mobile providers. These latter are now blossoming into substantial global providers precisely due to their position in one of the fastest growing and most dynamic regions in the world. The key providers are MTC (Celtel), MTN, Millicom, Atlantique Telecom, Orascom, Orange, Vodacom, Comium Mobile and Wataniya Telecom.

The report begins by identifying the new licensees and market entrants for this year, along with forecasts for any privatisations likely to occur. A powerful insight into the economic benefits of mobile phone penetration in Africa follows, balanced by analysis of any barriers that exist to mobile phone usage across the continent.

The real-life problems for would-be mobile users are taken onto account, not least by recognising the need for micro-finance, phone sharing, mobile money transfer services, m-banking and reduced handset costs. These problems are confronted by the authors of the report when they look at risk factors and critical success factors which will determine investment in African mobile.

For the writers critical strategy must incorporate a pan-African solution and the development of ?One Network? economies of scale. They warn that growth will only occur through regulatory support of more operator licences and ?mobile-friendly? policies. This in turn will speed the deployment of mobile services in the poorest countries who are discovering that mobile penetration can be used to jump-start wider economic growth.

In conjunction with the new Mobile Tariffs Africa Report, operators, regulators and investors can speedily grasp the growing opportunities, deployment and current pricing regime for mobile businesses in Africa.

A list of topics covered may be found on the Research and Markets website.

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