FEATURE
BUILDING AFRICA’S HYPERSCALE INFRASTRUCTURE BY CHRIS WOOD
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frica is the world’s second largest and second most populous continent, and is in many regards the one most primed for ICT growth: • according to the latest (March 2020) internet usage figures from Internet World Stats1, only 39.3% of Africa’s estimated 1.34 billion population currently use the internet – significantly less than the 62.9% figure for the rest of the world. • the GSMA predicts2 that between 2019 and 2025 the number of unique mobile subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa will increase by 30% - from 475.8 million to 617.6 million. • by 2050, UNICEF3 expects a quarter of the world’s total population and 40% of those aged under 18 to be African.
THE TIME IS RIPE
For companies offering connectivity-dependent products, applications and services in Africa, the prospects for business growth are very positive. Usage of internet-based social networking applications, music and video streaming, online gaming, etc. is on a steep upward curve in Africa as availability of lower-cost, higher
bandwidth access improves across the continent. The scope for further increases in internet uptake and bandwidth utilisation in Africa is huge. Mobile service uptake, driven by the desire to connect to such applications, will continue its inexorable growth as device costs and usage tariffs fall and average income levels rise. When the greater propensity for internet usage among younger adults is factored in, this makes the business picture even more attractive.
HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED
The international connectivity landscape in Africa has changed considerably in recent years, as the expansion requirements of traditional fixed and mobile operators, internet service providers (ISPs) and other service providers have been matched by the capacity demands of the new-to-thismarket Over-The-Top (OTT) players and content providers. Only a few years ago, typical carrier capacity requirements for international capacity in Africa would be measured as a number of STM1s (155Mbps) of capacity, but this is no longer the case. The rapid increase in the uptake of MAY 2020 | ISSUE 112
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