CHAPTER 2
Access to Telecommunications in Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed an explosion in the availability of telecommunications services. Since the end of the 1990s, when mobile networks were launched across Africa, telecommunications has gone from being a luxury that few could afford, even if they were able to access it, to an everyday service that many Africans use on a regular basis. By 2008, the last year for which comprehensive data are available, 263 million telephone subscribers (fixed and mobile) were found in Sub-Saharan Africa, equivalent to about 32 percent of the population.1 This growth has been accompanied by high levels of investment in network infrastructure and a steady geographical expansion of networks to cover more and more of the continent’s population, but, although telecommunications infrastructure has improved in all countries in Africa, some have moved much faster than others. Even in the most dynamic markets, one finds areas that have not yet benefited and people who are still not able to access basic information and communication technology (ICT) services. At one end of the spectrum, middle-income African countries are approaching universal access to basic voice telecommunications, with almost everyone who wants a mobile phone having access to one. At the other end, access rates in the very low-income countries or ones whose geography make it expensive to roll out network 25