Africa Offering Great Potential for Communication Industry: ITU Official

Africa offers great potential for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) industry with a rapid and dynamic growth throughout the continent over the past four years, a senior official of International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said on Tuesday.

In my opinion, after the Chinese market, Indian market, the African market will soon be a focus of the whole world, said Zhao Houlin, the Deputy-Secretary General of the ITU, in an exclusive interview with Xinhua on the sideline of ITU Telecom Africa conference being held in Cairo on May 11-15.

He noted that Africa's mobile telephone penetration increased 27 percent at the end of 2007 since 2004 when last ITU Telecom Africa was held, surpassing the goal of an increase of 6-10 percent by 2010.

When I visited Uganda in 2003, they had 700,000 mobile phones plus 60,000 fixed phones among a population of 27 million inhabitants. In March this year, they had 5.2 million among 28 million inhabitants, Zhao said.

In countries like Egypt and South Africa, the penetration is reaching some 80 percent to 90 percent, closing to many European countries, he added.

Africa enjoys the highest annual growth rate in mobile subscribers, with more than 250 million mobile subscribers in the continent at the beginning of 2008.

According to an ITU report released on Sunday, there were no less than 65 million new subscribers in 2007, and mobile penetration has jumped from just one in 50 people at the beginning of this century to almost one third of the population today. The mobile services have become more accessible and affordable.

In addition, there are an estimated 50 million Internet users in Africa last year, namely one in 20, and over half of the region 's Internet users are located in North African countries and South Africa.

ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Toure echoed Zhao in his address at the conference by saying that Africa offers tremendous potential for ICT development with vast natural wealth, a blossoming middle class and increasing number of young people and business opportunities.

However, challenges come alongside with opportunities in African communication industry. Low public access to Internet and lack of electricity are seen as handicaps to the development, said the ITU report.

More than 10,000 participants, including Arab and African communication ministers and representatives of international communication companies, attended this year's ITU Telecom Africa conference.

Source: CRIEnglish