{"id":1320,"date":"2015-10-21T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1320"},"modified":"2016-10-27T14:52:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T13:52:13","slug":"connectivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/10\/21\/connectivity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Course of Connectivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Anywhere and everywhere you look in Nigeria or Kenya, you will find people on\u00a0their mobile phones and other gadgets. <\/strong><a class=\"inline-twitter-link inline-tweet-click\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"inline_tweet_sharer_open_win('https:\\\/\\\/twitter.com\\\/intent\\\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.iese.edu%2Fafrica%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F1320%2F&text=Rich+and+poor%2C+old+and+young.+%A0The+use+of+mobile+phones+has+caused+a+revolution+in+Africa+%3F+and+more+is+to+come.+');\" title=\"Tweet This!\">Rich and poor, old and young. \u00a0The use of mobile phones has caused a revolution in Africa \u2013 and more is to come. <span class=\"non-dashicons\"> <\/span><\/a>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1322\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1322\" style=\"width: 301px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/10\/2014-06-28-12.58.46.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1322 \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/10\/2014-06-28-12.58.46-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"Mobile phones are used everywhere in Africa\" width=\"301\" height=\"399\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1322\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mobile phones are used everywhere in Africa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One of my colleagues sent me a presentation by <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ww2.frost.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Frost &amp; Sullivan titled \u201cMega Trends in Africa: Macro-to-Micro Implications for Business, People, and Society<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d It covers a wide range of issues: from the future of banking to health and wellness. Here I want to focus on connectivity. These\u00a0are some of Frost &amp; Sullivan\u2019s <strong>estimates of what the African landscape will look like by 2025<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Each African consumer will have 3 connected devices<\/strong> on average (of course, this is the old story of \u201ceating on average one chicken\u201d: some eat two chickens while others starve). This growth of connected devices is driven by urbanization, rising incomes, and the up-and-coming generation of tech-savvy Africans.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Total spending in information and communication technologies (ICT) will amount to US$325<\/strong>: if we take it as a proxy for the size of the internet economy, this will account for 7% of Africa\u2019s GDP.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Online retail will account for nearly 7% of total retail sales in Africa<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>520 million Africans will transact money through their mobile wallet<\/strong>, and this would lead to a market value of $438 billion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>These developments require improvements in internet speed.<\/strong> There\u2019s enormous variance in internet speeds across countries in terms of bits per second per internet user. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dhl.com\/en\/about_us\/logistics_insights\/studies_research\/global_connectedness_index\/global_connectedness_index.html#.ViZ0Ln7NxD8\" target=\"_blank\">Data from 2013<\/a>*<\/strong> show Kenya to have the highest internet speed in sub-Saharan Africa (49,860) and Central African Republic the slowest (136). To compare, the same metric in the UK was 352,583, in Spain 102,422, and in the US 64,089.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Even if improvements are needed, internet-based business opportunities lie ahead on the continent. Any ideas?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>* This information is from the DHL Global Connectedness Index 2014 prepared by Ghemawat and Altman.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anywhere and everywhere you look in Nigeria or Kenya, you will find people on\u00a0their mobile phones and other gadgets. One of my colleagues sent me a presentation by Frost &amp; Sullivan titled \u201cMega Trends in Africa: Macro-to-Micro Implications for Business, People, and Society.\u201d It covers a wide range of issues: from the future of banking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":1322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85385,492],"tags":[352,45555,89737,100368,835,909,100371,951,7984,1080,1211],"class_list":["post-1320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-doing-business-in-africa","category-development","tag-business","tag-connectivity","tag-development","tag-devices","tag-ict","tag-internet","tag-internet-speed","tag-kenya","tag-mobile-phones","tag-nigeria","tag-retail","megacategoria-mc-africa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1327,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions\/1327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}