• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan lead countries with cheapest data rate in Africa

mobile broadband

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, Egypt, Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi are the countries with the cheapest access to internet in Africa as at December 2018 according to a recently released survey by Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI).

The survey by A4AI, a global coalition of private sector, public sector, and not-for-profit organizations which analysed 100 Low and Middle income countries (LMIC) in the world showed that Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Rwanda and Burundi spent $1.12, $1.20, $2.74, $2.80 and $3.30 respectively on one gigabyte (1GB)mobile broadband data plan.

Ayodeji Ebo, MD, Afrinvest Securities Limited attributed this to the stiff competition in the telecommunication industry.

“The industry operates an oligopoly market structure where only a few firms dominate the industry. The operators have been forced to reduce the price of data to the barest minimum as a result of competition,” Edo said.

Ebo further added that despite the naira devaluation experienced in the last 2 years, the telecoms have not raised the price of data but rather come up with different packages at cheaper prices inclusive of bonanzas to consumers.

Meanwhile, the top five African countries with the most expensive access to internet were Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo known as D.R. Congo, Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Zimbabwe with $34.80, $20.00, $16.30, $15.66 and $ 15.00.

“Often, in countries where data is most expensive, it is due to a combination of having poor infrastructure and low consumer demand. People often buy data packages of just tens of megabytes at a time, making a gigabyte a relatively large and therefore expensive amount of data to buy,” Dan Howdle, a consumer telecoms analyst, Cable.co.uk said to Fin24, a South Africa Business newspaper.

With cheap and affordable data, Nigeria is underway of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 9c to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020.

To consider whether access is affordable, A4AI decided to consider two factors: the amount of data and the cost for purchasing that level of access.

“To measure affordability, we use a ‘1 for 2’ threshold — 1GB of data must be available for 2 percent or less of average monthly income in order to be considered affordable. Why ‘1 for 2’? We first determined 1GB as the minimum level of data needed for a basic or ‘entry level’ connection,” A4AI said.

Since 2015, Nigeria recorded continuous improvement in data affordability and is on the top list of achieving the A4AI target. The country improved from 6.54 percent, 1.57 percent, 1.59 percent and 1.58 percent in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively.

“There is enough of broadband internet due to a number of optic fibre lines that has terminated in Lagos all the way from Europe that is carrying data. That is why the data cost has dropped materially and also because there is competition among the telecommunication companies which makes it affordable,” Johnson Chukwu, CEO, Cowry Asset Management Limited said on phone

Nigeria has a total of six active international submarine fibre optic cable networks that formed the core networks. Five of them are connected to the world via Europe while one is connected to a neighbouring country, Cameroun.

Jumia, Africa’s leading e-commerce Company’s 2018 Mobile report stated that the number of mobile subscribers grew astronomically in 2017 and its penetration increased to 84 percent in comparison with 53 percent in 2016.

Ebo said that Internet penetration in Nigeria has been made possible with the availability of low cost of mobile phones which provides the opportunity to access the internet.

Also, according to the National Bureau of Statistic (NBS), the number of Nigerians who were active on internet increased year-on-year by 13.6 percent to 112.1 million in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2018 compared to 98.7 million in Q4 2017.

Out of the LMIC that was surveyed, Asia had the lowest price while Africa had the highest.

Also, A4AI new data showed that the average price of a 1GB of data relative to income has increased over the past year in Africa while dropping or staying same in other regions.

This is the first reversal in price trends seen since A4AI began measuring prices four years ago.

 

BUNMI BAILEY