 | Issue: | 2010 |
| Article no.: | 11 | |
| Topic: | When everything connects | |
| Author: | Pieter Uys | |
| Title: | CEO | |
| Organisation: | Vodacom Group | |
| PDF size: | 144KB |
About author
Pieter Uys is the CEO of Vodacom Group. Prior to his appointment as CEO, Mr Uys served as Vodacom Group’s Chief Operating Officer and, earlier, as Managing Director of Vodacom SA. Mr Uys joined Vodacom Group as a member of its initial engineering team. Pieter Uys holds Bachelor of Science and Masters of Science degrees in engineering from the University of Stellenbosch and a Master of Business Administration degree from Stellenbosch Business School.
Article abstract
The 400 million mobile phones in use in Africa have transformed the way that Africans connect with each other and the world. An aggressive rollout of mobile data capacity in many African countries means much of the continent will finally be able to take its rightful place in a world in which everything connects. The keys to ensuring that Africa never again lags behind the rest of the world in the communications sphere are quality and affordability.
Full Article
On a street choked with pedestrians and vehicles near the centre of the sprawling city I come across a queue of people waiting patiently outside a shop. The shop turns out to be a coffee shop, but it’s not caffeine the people are lining up for. They’re queuing for knowledge, and the chance to learn about what is happening elsewhere in the world. The city is Mwanza in northern Tanzania. Internet hotspots, it seems, are all over this ramshackle city on the shore of Lake Victoria – in the main thoroughfares, in the markets and in many of the side streets. Across Africa I have witnessed similar scenes in towns, villages and cities; ours is a continent that wants to know and needs to connect. When the great and the good meet in Geneva or New York to discuss how a ‘connected world’ can contribute to achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, this is the reality they are addressing; ours is an economically deprived continent that has an insatiable hunger for knowledge, and a fervent belief that access to information promises a better life for all. Traditional fixed-line telephony failed Africa miserably. Just one per cent of Africans have access to a landline, but Africa is embracing mobile telephony with gusto. Today there are some 400 million mobile handsets in use in Africa, more than in North America. It is mobile that is helping Africa to connect with itself and the world. It is mobile that has the power to kick-start a continent-wide economic renaissance. There is simply no disputing the connection between mobile penetration and economic growth. Persuasive research points to an almost one per cent boost to gross domestic product for every ten per cent increase in penetration. Africa needs this kind of development. It needs mobile. Outside Mwanza and many African cities like it, rural schools are crammed with children eager to learn, but the textbooks their teachers use were published decades ago. They’re out of date, and such learning as they may impart puts these youngsters at an immediate disadvantage relative to their peers in Europe or North America. The up-to-date information they need, and the latest teaching aids and techniques are available – free of charge – on the Internet. If these youngsters and their teachers could be connected, they could catch up with the rest of the world in an instant. This, in a very real sense, is the digital divide – the gap between people and the knowledge they need to improve their lives. The most practical and most affordable bridge across this divide is mobile. Those in our industry who are committed to development and to Africa are investing in giving historically deprived schools in many countries the tools to open up a whole new world of learning: computers, printers, mobile devices, email and the Internet. Not only are these children learning languages, sciences and mathematics, they are learning to feel at home in a technological, connected world; they are becoming our customers of the future. Until recently, a tradesman in Africa would open a small business once he had amassed enough capital to afford the tools of his trade, the rent on a small shop or workshop and the all-important sign advertising his services. Then, when he acquired a mobile phone he put his number up on the sign. Now he can write on that sign his email address so that customers can contact him even with his phone switched off and he is busy earning a living. As the tradesman establishes himself and attracts more customers, mobile operators can take his business to higher and higher levels: hosting a website so he can advertise his business more extensively and more cheaply than he ever dreamed possible. Perhaps, one day, he will establish a virtual private network to connect his various workshops and offices. The world is connecting at breathtaking pace; daily advances in hardware and stunningly innovative applications mean that for many of us there is no longer any reason to be disconnected from anyone with whom we care to be connected. The social networking phenomenon is becoming so pervasive that tweeting is happening in what were once the most remote regions of the world, including Africa. By 2020, I believe, we will be living in a connected world of 50 billion or so SIM cards; your car will have three or four SIMs, your refrigerator perhaps as many, doing things like detecting when you’re about to run out of milk, and ordering more. For Africa the opportunities to use this technology to swiftly overcome decades of underdevelopment are staggering. By democratising the Internet and email we can afford the continent better education, more efficient work and trade, improved government and more effective delivery of health and social services. But there is always a cost attached to innovation and the critical question is – can Africa afford to catch up, and then keep up, with the rest of the world? It used to be that the cost of mobile handsets was a major barrier to entry. Mobile operators in Africa, aware of the critical importance of achieving massive penetration, have worked hard to bring these costs down. Today in South Africa we have reached the point where a basic entry-level handset can be retailed for between US$10 and US$15. My company has become one of the leading sellers of notebooks in its home market, offering an open-source notebook with 300MB of data for under US$25 per month. The priority now has to be to make smartphones as affordable and as pervasive as ordinary mobile phones. Quite simply, I want everyone in Africa to have a smartphone, to be able to access the benefits of broadband data communications and the benefits of connectedness. Is this merely a pipe dream or are we actually moving in the right direction? I believe Africa is making huge strides towards becoming connected. As in the rest of the world, Africa’s mobile data traffic is rapidly overhauling voice traffic. In South Africa, real data prices have been declining for some years and consumers and business have responded; data traffic for the three months prior to June 2010 soared – up 55 per cent in comparison to the same period last year. The FIFA World Cup certainly contributed to this increase, but by no means explained an increase of such staggering proportions. It was certainly no coincidence that smartphone sales rose a bit more than this same percentage in the same period. Creating meaningful connectedness is not just about putting affordable tools in the hands of individuals, learners, teachers and entrepreneurs. It is about having the quality network infrastructure to support a robust growth in broadband data usage. In Tanzania, Lesotho and Mozambique we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on 3G networks while in South Africa we are rolling out HSPA+ sites with theoretical speeds of 21Mbps. In South Africa alone we have 3,600 3G base stations; an enormous investment in infrastructure that is now paying dividends as customers take up the opportunities presented by broadband coverage of a quality and reliability that gives them a meaningful experience they can afford. Until very recently, Africa lagged some five or more years behind the world in its adoption of ICT. That is no longer the case. The difference has been mobile. Now we have the opportunity to use mobile to change the lives of ordinary people in Cape Town, Soweto and Mwanza. It’s up to us Africans – governments, regulators, operators and citizens – to determine how we employ our growing connectedness to help create a better, healthier and more successful Africa.
