Value Added Services: The Next Killer Application In West Africa

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Hello Again!
Last time I was looking at where the market will be going in the Nigerian telecoms market and I predicted that the next gold mine will be Value addition with special emphases on Data services.

Today I intend to explore this a bit in detail, taking a global look on the market situation in the western sub- region of Africa.

Well with little hindsight, I can tell you that the WA is ripe for wireless Data explosion right now and may be the only solution for operators to solve the ever declining ARPU on voice networks. It may sound far fetched giving the poverty situation within the sub region but statistics on ground supports my views here.

The sub region is beset with a lot of decayed infrastructure, from poor road networks to poor power supply, but it has shown resilience in supporting the wireless market as current experience has shown.
The next push therefore is to bring internet to the doorstep of every home in Nigeria as the clear leader and the entire sub region. NCC is doing a great work in this regard and it is committed to bringing affordable data services to the poor and un-serviced in Nigeria. It has also gone further to show this commitment by the sell of the 2.3GHZ frequency for broadband wireless data at a very reasonable modified auction method. The goal being to reduce the total cost of ownership for a wireless broadband device and associated services.

With the population of 140 million plus for Nigeria 60% of which are youth and over 70% of this population within the productive sector the current data service subscriber of about 10 million is a far cry for the market capacity. But even this has shown a phenomenal increase from the miserly 200,000 at the end of 2000. Today the Nigeria internet users constitute about 18.5% of the total internet users in Africa.
In Sierra Leone for instance with a population of about 6m total internet subscribers as at today is 13,000 as compared with 5,000 as at Dec 2000 and in Senegal, the picture is not too different. Today’s population stands about 13 Million, total internet users at 820,000 compared with 40,000 in 2000. Ghana for instance has a population of about 23M with internet users as at December 2000 at 30T but now has over 880T users connect on the net. So you see that stage is set for an explosion.



Facts to note for today
Internet penetration for Africa =5.6%
World Average =23.8%
Rest of the world =26.9%
Source: InternetWorld stats

The Challenge: “what kind of solution will providers bring that can meet the need of the local market at an affordable rate’?
There is a clear need for innovation here. Some of this innovation will require proactive changes to the existing services offered by the GSM providers in this regards.
It will be nice to see for example
Black berry’s in Nigeria languages... Hausa, IBO, Yoruba
Providers leveraging on their infrastructure across WA to enhance e-commerce within the region
Hosting services that offers IPTV and educational services
Medical services by video online
With the coming of common currency as expected, then mobile money transfer and m-banking
Meanwhile my congratulation to Main One Cable coy For the Job they are currently doing to connect the west coast and Europe

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