The growth that we have seen throughout Rwanda since the turn of the century has put the country at the heart of African success stories in 2022. Although the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted economic growth in 2020, as vaccines roll out to the wider population, it is important for the economy to pick up where it left off in order to continue to improve living standards. To ensure this growth, we need to remove the barriers that could affect businesses getting back to normal, the most essential of which is to remove poor connectivity. The Coronavirus pandemic has shown us that enabling employees to get their work done in different circumstances is key to maintaining productivity and adapting to geopolitical events. The solution for this problem is mobile. In that respect, Rwanda has some way to go. Although mobile is the most dominant platform for voice and data services, and subscribers increased 2.7% year on year in 2021, coverage is a key focus of the Rwandan Government. Over the 2020-21 financial year, the Universal Access Fund contributed 91% of their RWF 3.828 billion to building new telecom towers to increase network coverage in areas that need it. That’s great news and will ensure Rwanda stands out amongst its friends in the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), which is lagging behind the rest of the Sub-Saharan African countries. According to a GSMA Mobile Economy Sub-Saharan African report from last year, over a third (35%) of the population in ECCAS countries are without any access to mobile internet. That coverage gap is 16% higher than the Sub-Saharan average and 12% larger than the next highest coverage gap in the regional breakdown. That obviously needs to be improved, but where the region lacks coverage, the connected users still keep pace with other territories and is only 3% off the 28% average. This means over a third of the population that can access mobile internet services do. This access is going to be fundamental for the Rwandan economy, as more customers encourage more investment in the network, and widens the potential areas for employment and setting up new businesses in the internet era. Better coverage will also come with more use cases for the network. If we look over to more developed mobile markets in Europe and America, video streaming capabilities are baked into the core selling points from all networks. With the introduction of 5G, real-time live streaming or gaming is also becoming a service that operators will be looking to leverage in order to make a sale. Rwanda, along with the rest of the ECCAS, is a long way off a 5G introduction at this moment in time. Instead, the focus should be on converting the 2G and 3G customers onto 4G in line with GSMA predictions that usage will quadruple in the Sub-Saharan region to 9GB per subscriber per month. In 2020, only 9 per cent of users in the ECCAS region are using 4G technology - with 2G still servicing 53 per cent of the region. By 2025, that is set to change - with 3G accounting for over half of subscribers and 4G growing to just over one fifth. Regardless of the technology, penetration is only predicted to grow 4 per cent to 46 per cent, with smartphone adoption the only real mover, seeing a predicted 20% increase over the five years. With that adoption, along with better coverage, more people will be able to contribute to the economy. In 2020, mobile generated $38 billion of economic value to Sub-Saharan economies, demonstrating the opportunity for telecom companies that want to invest effectively into the networks they provide. The case becomes even more appealing when we take into consideration that productivity uses that were enabled by mobile technologies contributed an additional $83bn to the economy in 2020. Although this may have been driven by a pandemic, GSMA continues to forecast a growth in mobile-enabled productivity to the point that it adds $94Bn to the sub-Saharan economy in 20225. This is a key area operators need to tap into because, despite governmental help, expanding networks is an expensive undertaking and needs to be done with a regular revenue stream behind it. Appealing to businesses and enabling people to be productive outside of a typical office will entice new adopters and push new use cases into the market, including home broadband and IoT devices, which can provide vital services for fledgling businesses and remote workers. With more services, the prices for consumers can be subsidised, attracting more adopters, starting them on a path that can end in Fixed Wireless Access plans, wrapped around a Netflix bundle that provides value to the customer and the revenues to operators to consistently improve the network. The writer is senior director of Simon-Kucher & Partners Middle East
