Africa´s offer to the crazy mobile world

Consumers will be able to transfer money to another person just by using the person’s mobile phone number, pay utility bills as well as recharge their prepaid SIM cards using the service.

Workable options
Banking is not its core business so Nokia has to find somebody with that core competence to manage the banking side of that business. In Africa as an alternative, Nokia could partner with mobile phone operators like Zain, MTN or Safaricom, which inevitably raises the flipside question; would these operators be willing to close their own shops for the sake of Nokia? It´s no brainer. It´s is a tall order for Nokia especially trying to reach out into a market that is already ahead of it on the mobile money track.

The innovation by Safaricom on mobile money has not gone unnoticed just like a few years ago when Zain introduced the One Network, it caught the telecom world by surprise.

African operators have learnt how to make penetrative footprints of their own by tailoring services and products to the needs of their vicinity.

Fibre optics
Not much has been done by way of operationalising the arrival of Seacon and Team to Uganda but Kenya has made inroads and already some Ugandan companies are being serviced directly from hosts in Nairobi.

The last story the media carried about the state of the national backbone cables was a scandal of financial misappropriation on the project and insider squabbles that are costing the project more losses by the day.

The inevitability of competition in the telecom sector is undeniable, African governments can only leverage by laying strategic policies that ensure cost benefits to providers and fair prices to final consumers.

Tax system
The other issue, and closely related to the first, is the tax system. The telecommunication and banking sectors have been the best performing drivers of most African economies lately and inevitably governments have tended to cash on them by way of taxation. How much these governments are willing to milk out of these cash cows also determines how healthy and profitable the sectors will remain. Unfortunately, the tax burden imposed has defined the African mobile market as the most expensive.

By recognising Kenya, GSMA is asking of African governments to rethink their fiscal policy on mobiles.

That the elimination of short term taxation on mobile phones to increase affordability and driving medium terms gains on GDP and the total tax contribution by the sector would be a key driver for more investments and more jobs.

Mobile growth
The growth of mobile subscribers worldwide over the past decade has been phenomenal, now estimated at more than four billion users, with two-thirds of that number located in developing nations.

This means that the impact of modern mobile computer technology on society is reaching beyond the richest countries of the world where mobile telephony was first introduced, to the poorest countries where its potential impact is much greater. Once African governments recognize these ´facts´, the rest will be history because currently the continent still has the smallest consuming class but the largest potential of aspiring and climbing consumers only waiting to be brought into the fold.