January 28, 2004

Business Week: Africa: The Next Wide-Open Wireless Frontier

My spin: I usually do not include internationall news like this, that does not directly affect small businesses. However, this is an interesting developmnet (not new mind you) and worth noting.

For a telecommunications industry hungrily seeking new avenues of growth, a surprising opportunity is emerging. Sub-Saharan Africa -- home to more than 650 million people, three-quarters of whom live on less than $2 per day -- has become the world's fastest-growing market for mobile-phone service. Last year alone, the number of mobile subscribers in the whole region shot up 37%, to 34.4 million, compared with a 32% rise in Eastern Europe, the No. 2 growth region, according to researcher Gartner Dataquest. "It's just a huge opportunity," says Ali B.M. Conteh, chairman of Vodacom Congo (DRC), the No. 1 mobile provider in the continent's third-largest country.
(full story)

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