Driven by mobile telephony and information and communication technologies (ICT), the digital revolution is disrupting Africa. Online casinos operating in Europe such as bettingsider24.com in Norway, are now commonly offered by African sites.
What are the transformations underway for the African economy and in the daily lives of Africans?
A global phenomenon, the digital revolution has reached the African continent late. It is nevertheless deployed there with speed and vigor in unique ways, skipping stages.
A dazzling catch-up
Africa still appears at the bottom of the world rankings for information and communication technology (ICT) development and harnessing its potential. However, the diffusion of ICTs on the continent, which dates from the late 1990s, has accelerated sharply in recent years. With an average annual growth rate of over 6% according to the GSM Association, mobile telephony is experiencing the strongest growth in Africa in the world. It literally overwhelmed fixed telephony, the development of which was aborted. Africa will then become the world’s second largest market of mobile phones in terms of number of users.
African specificities
However, this dynamic is not equal across the continent. In sub-Saharan Africa, the penetration rate of mobile telephony varies greatly from country to country. In Niger and the Central African Republic, it does not reach 25% and in Eritrea it is estimated at 9%. In Mauritius, Seychelles, Botswana and South Africa, the rates are close to 70%.
This is partly due to another specificity of Africa’s digital turnaround: more than half of Internet connections go through mobile phones rather than through a computer. However, on the one hand, broadband is still expensive and not very accessible on the continent. On the other hand, the spread of smartphones has only accelerated very recently with the emergence of a second-hand product market and the emergence of more financially and technologically accessible devices, often made in China.
With this dynamic and its demographic growth, sub-Saharan Africa represents a considerable market for the ICT economy. Its weight, already estimated at 7.7% of the GDP of all sub-Saharan countries, should reach 8.6% in the end of 2021. As for the tax revenues generated by the sector, they would be around 13 billion dollars for the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa according to the GSMA report.
The telephone is indeed a proportionally greater source of expenditure for African households than for those in northern countries. Besides the purchase and repair, the costs of communication, but also of personalization – ringtones for example – increase the bills. Even though the costs of connecting to the Internet from a phone are dropping rapidly, they remain higher in Africa than anywhere else. Operators have developed offers adapted to consumption patterns: prepaid packages including communication and Internet browsing, credit reloading in small amounts, numerous and frequent promotions, etc. It is the same on social networks. Facebook, for example, allows the sending of publications and “likes” by SMS, while in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, Google offers the possibility of sending emails without an Internet connection, also by SMS.
In sub-Saharan Africa, therefore, it is for the moment the mobile phone that is driving the digital revolution. A multifunctional and essential tool of daily life, it now ranks alongside basic services (electricity, improved sanitation facilities), for which coverage rates are similar or even lower.