txtNation, Ready for the African adventure?

EVERY industry report says the same thing: the real growth in mobile belongs to the developing world. And where is this promised land? It’s in the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China. But what of Africa, the last great unexplored continent (unless you include Antarctica)?

Well, Africa is often unfairly overlooked. For example, speak to any publisher with a global remit and they will tell you about the extraordinarily progressive outlook of Vodacom in South Africa. But South Africa has always been something of an exception – the industrial powerhouse of the continent. How interesting, and encouraging, then to hear that there’s plenty going on in the heart of Africa – in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere.

The progress of the sub-Saharan content revolution was made clear when one of it’s biggest provider, announced it would bring mobile English Premier League football highlights to Africa (excluding South Africa) for the first time. The offering will provide near-live coverage of all the 380 Premiership matches in the forthcoming season, individual match and weekend ‘round-up’ highlight packages, as well as SMS competitions and other types of content.

Nigeria’s mobile subscriber base hit 30 million in 2006, up from 18.6 million at the end of 2005. The country contributed around 24 per cent of the African continent’s subscriber growth last year and is easily the biggest territory after South Africa. Michael Whelan, Director says: “Nigeria is a huge country and that 30 per cent of its subscribers have multimedia-enabled handsets. That’s a decent base to work from.”

Predictably in a developing market, the majority of content sales are of SMS-based content such as jokes, daily horoscopes, celebrity gossip, and so on.

“We’ve been in business since 2003 and we’ve seen a lot of progress made in mobile content. But there’s still a long way to go in terms of making consumers aware of what’s out there and how to get it.”
07/03/2008 - By Charlotte Tuckett