The world is starting to take notice of Africa’s tech and telecommunications industry. Buoyed by the world’s fastest-growing mobile economy, rapid urban development and technological advancement, growing populations and rising incomes, telecoms networks have found themselves right at the centre of digital growth and transformation right across the continent.
According to the GSMA, sub-Saharan Africa is witnessing a faster rise in mobile subscription numbers than anywhere else in the world. In a region long beset by widespread deficiencies in its fixed line network infrastructure, 3G and now 4G mobile are providing the digital highways to economic growth, connecting previously underserved populations and allowing African businesses to take full advantage of the global technological revolution.
At the end of 2018, the mobile industry accounted for 8.6% of the region’s total GDP, contributing $144bn, a figure expected to rise by a further $40bn over the next five years.
Ahead of AfricaCom 2019, we carried out our latest Insights survey to gauge the insider’s view of the African tech and telecoms market at this exciting time.
We surveyed 375 key decision makers in IT and communications roles from across the continent working in a broad swathe of industrial sectors, including agriculture, education, government, retail, construction, manufacturing and utilities, as well as the telecoms and tech sectors themselves.
What we found was that stakeholders are more or less united it their view that investment in technology and continued digital disruption represent the keys to economic development across the region. More than three quarters of our respondents told us that their organisations were planning to increase investment in technology in 2019, with the FinTech, IoT and AgriTech sectors singled out as those expected to attract the most funding.
In terms of specific technologies, a third of our survey participants told us that they believed Artificial Intelligence (AI) was where businesses should be focusing most of their tech investment in 2019, with a quarter singling out cybersecurity. According to Tractica, AI will contribute $250 million to the African telecoms industry alone by 2025, with a wide range of applications emerging across consumer, commercial and industrial markets - and, significantly, playing a key role in next generation network optimisation.
If AI heralds a great disruptive opportunity in African business and commerce, cybersecurity speaks of the concerns and perceived challenges industry insiders see in embracing and capitalising on digital transformation. Cybersecurity ranked as the top tech-related challenge our respondents see facing business in Africa, followed by the ongoing stark digital divide between urban and rural populations.
Looking to the future, 5G is a topic on the lips of telecoms industry players the world over, with the very first commercial next-gen network roll-outs taking place in countries like South Korea, China, The Philippines and the US this year. More of our respondents felt that African telecoms operators should be investing in 5G than any other technology, but there is a recognition that the region lags behind many other parts of the world on 5G development. Half of our participants don’t expect to see 5G across the majority of the continent until 2023 or later.
