Mobile Market in Africa: The Case of Nigeria

Abstract

Africa is the world’s second largest mobile market after Asia. Based on the fact that the continent’s wide economic growth and an increasingly competitive marketplace, the number of subscriptions in Africa is set to reach one billion by 2015. The transformation of Nigeria»s telecommunications access since the licensing of three GSM networks in 2001 and a fourth one in 2002 has yielded a huge result. The country continues to be one of the fastest growing markets in Africa with triple-digit growth rates almost every single year since 2001. In this paper we carried a report containing a market overview and analysis, key statistics, regulatory issues and forecast for the mobile market in 2017. In conclusion we find out that Nigeria has overtaken South Africa to become the continents largest mobile market almost 100 million subscribers, but however, market penetration remains at only about 60% in early 2012 as a result of the global economic crisis, reinforced in 2010 but then declined again in 2011.