Investors update: November 16, 2022 - Africa to add 100m mobile subscribers in next three years.

Africa to add 100m mobile subscribers in next three years

Highlights

• By 2025, the contribution of Africa’s mobile industry to its GDP will grow to almost $155 billion from $138 billion last year, as the countries in the region increasingly benefit from the improvements in productivity and efficiency brought about by the increased take-up of mobile services.
• That’s according to a GSMA report, which also predicted Africa will add nearly 100 million new subscribers by 2025, bringing the total number of subscribers to 613 million – almost half of the region’s population.
• Nigeria and Ethiopia – the two most populated countries in Africa – will account for almost a third of these new subscribers.

Source: GSMA Intelligence

Our Takeaway

Africa’s telecommunications industry, one of the largest sectors in the region, has witnessed rapid growth over the past two decades while playing a key role in shaping the continent’s economy as we know it today. Much of this growth is driven by some deregulation of the sector across the continent, massive investments in network infrastructure by dominant multinational operators, and a large young population increasingly adopting mobile voice and data services.

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Orange launches its first African 5G network in Botswana

Highlights

• French telecoms group Orange has launched a new 5G network in Botswana in a first step towards rolling out the high-speed data offering to other markets in the Middle East and Africa.
• Following the initial Botswana launch, the 5G coverage will extend to 30% of the southern African nation’s population, including those living in Gaborone and Francistown, the two largest cities.
• Africa and the Middle East, where Orange operates in 18 countries, account for over 60% of the company’s total mobile customers and 6.4 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in revenue.

Source: TechCabal

Our Takeaway

With the rollout of commercial 5G in Botswana, Orange recorded its first rollout of the network on the continent. However, adoption faces hurdles due to the high cost of 5G-enabled handsets as well as data in the country. Meanwhile, Botswana joins Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and a few other African nations where commercial 5G services have been launched. Ghana and Egypt are also expecting a rollout sooner rather than later. For Africa, 5G could unlock a broad range of opportunities, including optimizing service delivery, decision-making, and end-user experience.

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Kenyan agritech startup Stable Foods raises $600k funding

Highlights

• Kenya’s Stable Foods has raised $600,000 in funding to build out its climate-smart smallholder food production system. 
• Stable Foods offers an integrated solution that includes Irrigation-as-a-service (IaaS), provision of inputs and offtake contracts, and training on regenerative agriculture best practices to smallholder farmers. 
• The funding comes from Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund (ARAF) and Mercy Corps Ventures and will be used to scale up Stable Foods’ proof of concept to 500 farmers by the end of 2023.

Source: Disrupt Africa

Our Takeaway

Nearly 20% of the world population lives in Africa, and yet the continent accounted for less than 2% of the global agrifood tech investment in 2021, leading to missed untapped opportunities by a lack of early-stage seed capital. That underlines the importance of Stable Food’s fundraising, which should help the startup scale its solution to a crucial continental problem. Africa is fast becoming a global leader in the agritech space, with the continent boasting the highest number of agritech services in the developing world, reaching over 30 million smallholder farmers, as of 2021.