There Will Be More Than One Billion Mobile Phones in Africa…What Does This Mean?

A lot of telecommunications analysts have turned their sights toward the Middle East and Africa. That shouldn’t be a surprise, considering that, by 2016, analysts expect there to be more than one billion phones across the continent, with 991 million being feature phones. Indeed, Cisco expects that mobile data traffic growth will be fastest in this region.

It’s a particularly exciting time to watch these developments in Africa. The continent already has some of the highest mobile money payments in the world— in Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda, there are more mobile money bank accounts than traditional bank accounts.

All of these trends point to explosive mobile use and increased connectivity in Africa as a whole. So, what’s one of the biggest changes we can expect to see here?

A new boom in African creative industries

One significant shift that was highlighted at Mobile Web East Africa by tech website MemeBurn is occurring in television and literature. Traditionally, both of these industries have suffered from lack of art-based, educational programmes in schools and from a lack of resources.

The CEO of BuniTV and Buni Media, Marie Lora-Mungai, spoke at the conference and said that having mobile access to films will revolutionise the space. She hopes that filmmakers will be able to distribute their work much further than before and create pieces for mobile consumption.

Likewise, the vice president of marketing at BiNu, Mark Shoebridge, talked about how mobile will affect reading habits. At Mobile Web East Africa, he claimed that 70% of female readers who are using World Reader, an app for smartphones, are reading over a thousand screen pages.

How this is going to affect data use in Africa

I think it’s safe to say that 991 million feature phones are going to bring about a radical change in data use in Africa. As we’ve mentioned before, changing data use doesn’t just make for a better mobile experience, the increased connectivity enriches consumers’ lives.

Of course, there’s going to be a vast range of different needs among customers in Africa. Communications service providers (CSPs) will be hard-pressed to customise service packages and personalise their interactions to accommodate these trends.

Africa is in an interesting position because of the sheer diversity of needs when it comes to data. It’s happening fast, too. Last October, for example, more Nigerians accessed the Internet on mobile phones than on desktop computers.

To really meet the demands of the next decade’s mobile customers, CSPs will have to invest heavily in contextual analytics that can segment customers based on their individual behaviours when it comes to mobile data use. This way, no matter how vast the customer base or different the use cases, it’s possible to meet individual needs and prepare for the future.