Sub-Saharan Africa’s Mobile Penetration Rate Hits 43%

The GSM Association Mobile Economy 2016 Report has revealed that Sub-Saharan Africa mobile penetration rate has  43 per cent as at the end of 2015.

This is coming even as the mobile industry continue to witness more than 7.6 billion mobile connections and operator revenues of more than $1 trillion.

According to the report, the overall subscriber growth rates continue to be slowed down due to saturation in developed markets and the difficulties of connecting low-income populations in developing markets.

The global subscriber base will reach 5.6 billion by the end of the decade by which point over 70 per cent of the world’s population will have a mobile subscription.

The report noted that mobile growth is increasingly focused on the developing world – more than 90 per cent of the incremental one billion new mobile subscribers forecast by 2020 will come from developing markets.

The number of smartphone connections globally will increase by 2.6 billion by 2020, and again around 90 per cent of that growth will come from developing regions.

However, slowing subscriber growth, coupled with an increase in competition and a challenging macro-economic climate in many developing markets, means that growth over the next five years will be modest. A key factor behind increasing coverage and adoption of 4G across the world is spectrum allocation.

Over the next five years, an additional 1.3 billion people across the developing world are expected to gain access to the mobile internet, bringing the total to 3.8 billion, and accounting for just fewer than 60 per cent of the population.