Telecom (150)
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, African countries have sped up their digital transformation plans. Demand for the internet is growing, as a result. However, though internet adoption is rising tremendously, millions of residents are still unable to access the service because of its prices. Yet, affordable and quality internet is one of the requirements for successful digital transformation.
The Internet now appears like a necessary service in the likes of drinking water and electricity. According to the GSM Association (GSMA), in 2020, global internet penetration was 51% with 4 billion users. However, some countries have lower penetration rates. In its 2022 internet poverty index, the World Data Lab identified Nigeria as the country with the largest number of people living in internet poverty, meaning the number of people who “cannot afford a minimum package of mobile internet.”
The World Data Lab based its index on three factors, including affordability, quantity, and quality. “Affordability refers to the price of mobile broadband service and is set with a person’s total expenditure. (...) quantity refers to the amount of data that can be sent or received per theoretical use” while “quality describes a multitude of factors such as download and upload speed, bandwidth, latency, 2G, 3G, and 4G coverage, as well as the number of servers per 100,000 inhabitants,” the data agency explains.
The World Data Lab estimates that 103.015 million people are internet poor in Nigeria out of an estimated 217.366 million people. In the world, Nigeria is followed by India and China, we learn. In Sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand, Burundi is the country with the highest percentage of the internet poor in 2022, that is 96.6% of its 12.026 million residents.
According to the latest broadband affordability data from the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), in Africa, one-gigabyte bundles cost less than US$3 in ten countries while in 17 countries it ranges between US$3 and 5. In the remaining countries, it is over US$5. For the A4AI, broadband internet is deemed affordable when it is less than 2% of average monthly per capita incomes.
High internet cost is one of the obstacles to digital transformation in Africa because it prevents millions of residents from accessing the socio-economic opportunities it offers.
For the International Finance Corporation and Google, the digital economy can help generate up to US$180 billion of GDP in Africa by 2035. For that, however, affordable internet is needed.
Muriel Edjo
In 2020, Nigeria decided to boost its broadband penetration rate to 70%, by 2025. To this end, it is developing partnerships with actors that will contribute to the achievement of that goal.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Google Global Services Nigeria recently announced their commitments to collaborating for “ubiquitous” broadband access in Nigeria. The alliance formed in that regard was revealed during a visit paid, Thursday (April 14), by a Google Global Service delegation to the NCC headquarters in Abuja.
The visit was organized to discuss possible joint actions that could accelerate digital transformation in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
During the visit, Umar Garba Danbatta, NCC CEO and executive vice president stressed the importance of such an alliance and the need to make their joint initiatives more impactful and measurable through enhanced collaboration. As for Juliet Ehimuan, country manager for Google Nigeria, she commended the consultative approach always adopted by the NCC, the local telecom regulator, to formulate policies that impact digital and economic transformation in the country by promoting optimal delivery of telecom services.
On April 7, 2022, a Google Nigeria delegation announced to the Minister of the Digital Economy Isa Ali Pantami the coming landing (by late April) of Google’s subsea cable Equiano in Lagos. Through this high-speed teleNigeriacom infrastructure, Googles Global Services Nigeria wants to ensure that Nigeria's large population has access to high-quality data connectivity in line with the government's ambitions to increase broadband penetration to 70% and ensure digital inclusion by 2025.
For Umar Garba Danbatta, the subsea cable will have a significant impact on socio-economic development in Nigeria. He also urged approved telecom operators to collaborate on the creation of more landing points inland to make sure broadband internet is accessible everywhere.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Mobile operator Orange Egypt recently signed an exclusive 5-year partnership agreement with electronic payment network VISA. The agreement officially announced on Twitter, Tuesday, April 12, aims to provide Orange Cash clients with exclusive digital payment solutions through VISA virtual and physical bank cards.
Thanks to the partnership, Orange Egypt’s clients can make online and in-store transactions using Visa’s various payment services (both domestic and international services) right from their mobile money wallet (Cash wallet). It will also allow merchants to accept transactions via the digital wallet just by scanning QR Codes.
The partnership signed by Orange is in line with its commitment to “provide unique and innovative features to facilitate clients’ daily transactions as well as save them time and energy.” It will thus help Orange Egypt's clients carry out financial transactions in a simple, fast, efficient, and secure manner. It will also help the operator attract new customers and improve its position in the digital payment market in Egypt.
For VISA, the initiative is part of plans to "diversify payment methods, encourage digital payments, and support Egypt's evolution to a cashless society." In May 2017, the electronic payment network signed a memorandum of understanding with Egyptian authorities to develop the infrastructures needed to transform the country into a regional digital payment hub. So, Visa Inc. will capitalize on the "extraordinary opportunity" offered by the new partnership to pursue its growth ambitions.
Overall, the exclusive deal will contribute to Egyptian authorities’ efforts to move to a cashless society as the country is, since 2016, engaged in a digital transformation process, which was accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Isaac K. Kassouwi
Sattelite internet access has become a popular alternative for operators that want to provide internet in remote communities. However, it has limitations that AST SpaceMobile tries to overcome.
Orange, the French telecom group, is moving to test space-based cellular broadband internet in one of its African markets. The group signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with AST SpaceMobile on March 25 in this framework.
Under the terms of the agreement, AST SpaceMobile will deploy its services through the BlueWalker 3 satellite with no additional ground. It will thus allow internet access to Orange users in the targeted market, through standard 3GPP frequency bands.
For Chris Ivory (photo), AST SpaceMobile chief commercial officer, with its space-based cellular broadband internet solution, "AST SpaceMobile seeks not only to fill cellular broadband coverage gaps for millions of existing subscribers but also to extend mobile service to areas which currently have little to none at all."
Like most telecom operators, Orange is currently taking new initiatives to meet the growing demand for quality telecom services in Africa. Satellite is one of the options it looks into. It has its limitations, however. For instance, sometimes, ground equipment transmitting satellite signals fails to effectively cover remote areas.
Thanks to AST SpaceMobile's space technology, Orange will be able to bring the signal everywhere it is needed. Its users will be able to directly receive satellite signals. The memorandum of understanding signed by the two parties paves the way for discussions on a potential agreement for Orange to use the BlueBird satellite network being built by AST SpaceMobile.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
The government of Seychelles announced it is now connected to a second undersea optical fiber system that will boost access to connectivity in the country. The Pakistan East Africa Cable Express (PEACE) system landed on the Perseverance Island, a man-made island northeast of Mahé, the country's largest island, on Monday, March 7.
Benjamin Choppy (pictured), the Principal Secretary of the ICT Ministry, sees this infrastructure as an opportunity for the country to secure and improve its means of communication. Since 2011, Seychelles has been connected to a single undersea optical fiber cable, the Seychelles East Africa System (SEAS), which links it to Tanzania.
“For over 10 years, we had only one and this presented a risk for us if anything happens, especially today. If you look at the amount of traffic that we have on the cable, over 95 percent is on the SEAS cable. If something went wrong it would be catastrophic,” said Benjamin Choppy.
The PEACE is a 15,000 km undersea cable system spanning Africa, Europe, and Asia. It incorporates the latest 200G and WSS technology in its design to transmit more than 16 terabits of data per second per fiber pair. These capabilities give it the means to meet the growing connectivity needs in the country.
The Seychelles government has invested $20 million to connect to this new high-speed telecom infrastructure that will support the digitization of public services and the development of the digital economy. Amadou Dina, managing director of Airtel Seychelles, said the telecom company has already designed new products that will be launched when the new system goes live next May.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Digital transformation has accelerated across Africa in recent years, driven by Covid-19. Several countries have taken action to avoid missing the next global revolution.
The Ivorian government announced it has taken steps to make the Internet accessible across the territory. Under this plan, the government launched last March 7 in Abidjan the study on the universality of the Internet. The ceremony was presided over by the Minister of Digital Economy, Telecoms and Innovation, Roger Adom (pictured).
This study, initiated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), through the UNESCO Chair, will be conducted with the monitoring of an advisory committee of the digital sector. "After making consensual findings, we will make recommendations to improve the Internet in Côte d'Ivoire," said Professor Alain Kiyindou, Representative of the Unesco Chair. He said an official validation ceremony for the study is planned between May and June 2022 before the results are presented in December 2022 in Addis Ababa at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).
According to the ICT Regulatory Authority of Côte d'Ivoire (ARTCI), the Internet penetration rate was about 78% in Q3 2021. It is calculated by comparing the number of Internet subscriptions to the total population. ARTCI says this rate may not reflect the true level of Internet access in the country because many individuals in urban areas hold multiple SIM cards, which increases the number of subscriptions. In their Digital Report 2022, We Are Social and Hootsuite estimate Internet penetration in Côte d'Ivoire at 36.3%.
The study on the universality of the Internet in Côte d'Ivoire is financed up to CFA13.250 million ($22.3 million) by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Investment and Development Bank. Its benefits should enable Ivorians to benefit from the $180 billion in revenue that the digital economy is expected to generate in Africa by 2025, according to Google and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Muriel Edjo
Demand for broadband connectivity is growing in Africa. So are the risks of cybercrime. Improving supply while protecting access has become a necessity to ensure the region's development.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced yesterday it will soon deploy two root server clusters in Africa. One is confirmed to be installed in Kenya. The two technical infrastructures will allow Internet queries from Africa to be processed locally, without depending on networks and servers located in other parts of the world. It will also improve network quality by reducing latency throughout the region.
According to the international non-profit organization - which coordinates the domain name system and plays a key role in maintaining a global, interoperable and secure Internet – the clusters “will reduce the time it takes for a website to load, particularly when there are spikes in Internet usage. This will bring immediate benefits for everyday Internet users across the continent.”
The root servers will also reduce the impact of a potential cyberattack on the continent. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattacks aim to overwhelm servers with a flood of queries. The technical infrastructure will allow for greater bandwidth and data processing capacity, reducing the risk of Internet downtime due to a cyber-attack.
ICANN's investment in Africa is part of the ambitions of the Partner2Connect digital coalition launched on September 20, 2021, by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The goal is to drive meaningful connectivity and digital transformation globally in line with the African Digital Transformation Strategy (2020-2030).
Currently, only 33% of the African population has access to the Internet, according to ITU. With the digital transformation accelerating and inducing high Internet consumption, the Union believes that the rate will increase rapidly in the coming months.
Muriel Edjo
French telecom group Orange launched in 2019 a plan - Engage 2025- to offer consumers a better experience. To achieve this goal in Africa, the company has partnered with Atos to rethink its business process on the continent.
The deal will see Atos - a company specializing in the provision of integrated solutions in the areas of cloud, cybersecurity, and supercomputing- support the digitalization of some of Orange's subsidiaries in Africa; 14 subsidiaries are targeted. Two contracts were signed to this effect last February 22 between the two parties. The objective is to significantly optimize Orange's operating expenses over the next five years, reduce its carbon emissions, and improve the group's operational resilience and business agility in the region.
The first contract requires Atos to support and maintain about 100 apps in key areas - such as billing, customer relationship management, business intelligence, big data, procurement, order entry, and management - across Orange subsidiaries. The contract also includes infrastructure management for four specific subsidiaries: Orange Burkina Faso, Orange Sierra Leone, Orange Cameroon, and Orange Madagascar. The same approach will be gradually applied to other subsidiaries in the region.
The second contract Orange signed with Atos is for the deployment of Orange Private Cloud - a dedicated cloud computing environment - in six subsidiaries (Burkina Faso, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo). In these countries, Atos will also be able to support the integration of multi-vendor applications into Orange Private Cloud.
“We have ambitious digital transformation projects for our affiliates (Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Tunisia). Atos’ expertise in cloud services and business-critical application management, its deep knowledge of the telecom market, and its local presence in several countries in the Middle East and Africa make it a very valuable partner for Orange in the region,” says Jocelyn Karakula, CTIO, Orange Middle East & Africa.
The collaboration between Orange and Atos comes as part of the renewal of the CISA contract signed in 2017 by the two parties, but which covered only seven African subsidiaries. This new contract incorporates new innovative areas that fall within the scope of Atos, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud monitoring services and cloud orchestration, predictive maintenance, and intelligent automation.
Orange's new step aligns with one of its four growth ambitions for 2025, which is "to deliver a reinvented customer experience, smarter networks as well as improved operational efficiency."
Muriel Edjo
Africans need good access to the internet to contribute to the digital economy. Well aware of this challenge, Orange has, over the past five years, increased its investments in network coverage on the continent.
Telecom group Orange and Sonatel, its Senegalese subsidiary, announced on February 16, 2022, their partnership with the Luxembourg-based satellite telecom services provider SES to expand broadband connectivity in Africa. In this framework, Orange and Sonatel will deploy and manage SES' O3b mPower gateway on the continent. O3b mPower, a next-generation medium earth orbit satellite communications system, will be deployed in Senegal at Sonatel's teleport site in Gandoul, and other local satellite sites.
Jean-Luc Vuillemin (photo), director of international networks at Orange, explained that the partnership with SES stems from Orange’s conviction that “satellite remains a technology of the future and that the recent innovations it has been experiencing will surely reinforce its position in the telecommunications industry, in Africa but also other regions with more developed infrastructure like Europe or North America.”
Demand for high-speed internet in Africa has gone up significantly since 2020. This demand was mainly driven by the Covid-19 pandemic which sped up the digitization of several services, as well as changed data consumption habits. However, despite a greater demand, the network coverage in Africa is still low - in rural areas especially. In 2021, the penetration rate for mobile Internet on the continent was 28%, according to the GSMA. The latter also reports that 206 million sub-Saharan Africans have no access to a mobile network; this is out of a population of 1,084 million in the region.
For Jean-Luc Vuillemin, the collaboration with SES “will play a key role in Orange’s mission to build intelligent and open networks that will help make digital technologies more accessible and used by as many people as possible.”
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Officially launched on Jan 1, 2021, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) holds several business opportunities for African e-commerce. However, to leverage these opportunities, African countries need adequate policies. Assessing the gaps in these policies is a mission recently undertaken by Smart Africa Alliance.
On Dec 17, 2020, the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group greenlit a $1.5 million grant to Smart Africa Alliance, a group of 32 African countries, organizations, and international companies that want to create a single digital marketplace in Africa.
The grant, provided by the African Development Fund (the Bank’s concessional window), will be used to assess policy gaps in the digital and e-commerce ecosystems of Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Republic of Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lacina Koné, CEO of Smart Africa, said: “One of the critical challenges preventing the continent from preparing for Africa’s bold new future is the inability to conduct cross-border payments for goods and services due to a lack of solutions and crippling policies. Our partnership with the African Development Bank is crucial in creating an enabling environment to advance e-payments, and the digital economy is essential for Africa’s renaissance.”
Smart Africa Alliance will, as part of its assessment mission, consult with public and private sector stakeholders to develop an e-learning program that will directly benefit 600 stakeholders, including government officials, small and medium enterprises, private sector mobile network operators, and indirectly benefit another 2,500.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) officially began operations on Jan 1, 2021. Regrouping all 55 African Union member states, this 1.2 billion people market has a gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.5 trillion. According to the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa, it is an asset that can foster the boom of e-commerce in Africa. However, for this to happen, every country must have a legal e-commerce framework that favors international trade.
“This project is both timely and vital. For the continent to create a unified digital market by 2030, efforts should focus on harmonizing and building a cohesive policy environment for intra-continental trade,” said Nicholas Williams, Division Manager for ICT Operations, AfDB.
Muriel Edjo