Africa and Middle East Mobile Data Use to Reach 4.6GB/month by 2022

Monthly mobile data use per consumer in Africa and the Middle East (AME) is set to reach 4.6GB by 2022, GlobalData reports.

Houda Bostanji, Technology Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “In the Middle East, Kuwait boasts one of the largest subscriber mobile data usages in the world at 23.8 GB/month in 2017, followed by Bahrain. Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritius lead the African ranking.

“All AME countries will witness a double-digit data usage Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) through 2022, leading to a regional average of 15.1%.”

The growth is driven by the increasing availability of smartphones for below $50, as well as falling data prices and the introduction of unlimited data plans.

Part of African data consumption comes through channels such as Facebook’s Free Basics internet – a service which gets users online via a Facebook account.

Data from Facebook’s Inclusive Internet Index shows that internet access grew 8.3% over the past year.

At Mobile World Congress 2018, the company announced that it would be further increasing its efforts to connect new parts of the world. An associated blog post reads:

“Facebook is collaborating on additional efforts to expand connectivity, including partnerships focused on backhaul infrastructure and more than 10 Express Wi-Fi partners and 85 Free Basics partners worldwide.

“In addition, we are working with partners in unconnected and under-connected regions to explore new business models and technologies for deployments, share learnings and best practices from these deployments, and create data science tools to supplement existing network planning methodologies.”