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The Top 10 Mobile Operators in Sub-Saharan Africa
Business Monitor International, Aug 2010, Pages: 46
‘The Top 10 Mobile Operators in Sub-Saharan Africa’ examines how the largest mobile operators in Sub-Saharan Africa are faring at maintaining the growth that has been the biggest draw for investors to the region.
Identifying which operators have been most successful in achieving profit-making operations in this region, and reasons for success, this report provides insight both to improve the fortunes of struggling operations and to guide operators likely to be in a similar position to the larger operators in a few years.
Key Findings:
- Sub-Saharan Africa is virtually the last big growth frontier in telecoms, the continental average mobile penetration is low at close to 30% at the end of 2009.
- Nigeria is the largest mobile market in Africa, even though it is still in a rapid growth phase with a penetration rate of around 50% at the end of 2009.
- Strategy as well as market size is important to attaining customer growth in African telecoms markets, with increasing access to services, aggressive expansion, lowering costs of access, attractive pricing offers and service quality all key strategies.
- With continuing low demand for postpaid services those able to make prepaid work will survive, successful prepaid operators tend to have large and strong distribution networks and preferential on-network pricing to increase loyalty.
Africa is seen as the last big growth frontier in telecoms, but turning a profit is challenging. BMI looks at how the biggest operators are facing this challenge. Sub-Saharan Africa is seen as virtually the last big growth frontier in telecoms, especially in mobile telecoms. In many markets all over the world, operators are having to accept that large growth in customer numbers is behind them, and that they will have to transform and innovate to continue to stimulate growth in revenues.
However, in Sub-Saharan Africa there is still much growth in customer numbers to be had, and many big international telecoms groups are keen to improve their exposure to this growth to offset the challenges they are facing elsewhere. The 22 markets in this region that BMI regularly covers in our quarterly telecommunications reports had an average mobile penetration rate of 55% at the end of 2009. Given that it is generally the smaller, less developed markets that we do not include in our quarterly coverage (including these instead on an ad hoc basis) such as Chad, Niger or Malawi, the continental average is much lower, closer to 30%. Even the 55% for the 22 most important markets is lower than any of BMI’s other regional averages, as shown in the graphic.
Achieving growth in customer numbers in markets where the penetration rate of any telecommunications services was, until a few years ago, virtually nil, basic infrastructure, including access to power–which is extremely important for rolling out telecoms services–is extremely low and the majority of the population live close to or below the poverty line is a great challenge in itself. Not many years ago, it seemed impossible to many companies. However, some saw the potential and pursued it. Initial roll-outs were limited, and costs were high, but once demand was well demonstrated, services were extended, and the more subscribers flocked to mobile services, the more costs came down. The result has been generally explosive growth and declining ARPUs.
Sub-Saharan Africa appears to offer a great growth prospect to operators, but it has its problems. These have been amply demonstrated by Zain’s retreat from the continent. It is difficult to make or maintain a profit in many of these markets. Although some elements within the Zain management were keen to keep hold of its African portfolio, shareholders were keen to sell in order to see a more rapid return on their investment, because in general the operations in Africa were failing to show a profit.
Making returns on African mobile markets is apparently not the easiest thing to do, and while maintaining growth in customer numbers through the basic formula of expanding the reach of services, and reductions in price where possible, seems to have become an easier task, achieving profitability has been difficult for some. In this report BMI will look at the 10 largest mobile operators in Sub-Saharan Africa, to examine how operators are faring at maintaining the growth that has been the biggest draw for investors, and which of them has been more successful in achieving profit-making operations in this region, and perhaps what has really made the difference and how this knowledge may help improve the fortunes of those who are struggling with ongoing losses or may be in a similar position to the larger operators in a few years.
Because Zain has stopped offering a country-by-country breakdown of its operations since entering into the sale process, the latest data we have from this key player is for Q309. For this reason we have used data from Q309 for this study. At the time of writing, some operators released Q110 data, and most others had of course produced statistics for Q409. However, we want to make as accurate a comparison as possible, so we have picked the point in time of end-September 2009. For more recent data please contact BMI.
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