Africa Telecoms Investment update

I had the chance to return to a topic that was very close to my heart for many years: that of the development of foundations for a digital economy in Africa. I'll drop a transcript of my keynote at SATNAC here in the next day or so, but for now, here's two high level figures on the investment over the last 5 years.

I'm planning to restart blogs on this topic (and in general) once I've completed my latest book, on the traits of a digital business, later in the year.

In the interim, here's two figures: total investment in telecoms infrastructure, including international, core, MAN and access for all African countries, split by region. My summary of the figures is that although investment has been huge in African countries, on a per capita basis very few countries are even on par with the global average investment. Given where they're coming from, this means that African countries are effectively falling behind in terms of the foundational infrastructure that powers a digital economy.

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