Eighty percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's 800 million people should have access to mobile phones by the end of the decade ? double the current rate ? although government help is needed to reach more isolated areas, industry body group GSMA said yesterday.
The growth of mobile data ? an even more powerful economic tool than simple voice services ? also hinges on authorities allocating sufficient spectrum, said Mortimer Hope, Africa director of GSMA.
"We expect data to keep growing dramatically, and to facilitate that, you need more spectrum to handle that data growth," he told Reuters on the side-lines of the World Economic Forum Africa in Cape Town.
To unleash the full potential of mobile Internet services, he said, governments should also consider cutting taxes on Web-enabled handsets to make them more affordable to consumers.
At the moment, about 15% of Africans have access to the Internet via their mobile phones, this percentage varying per country.
"It's very early days for data but we would like it to be everywhere you have voice. The extra physical infrastructure deployment is not as big as you would think," said Hope.
SMSes and mobile social media have become powerful political and social tools worldwide and particularly in African countries; for example, as used by grassroots political movements to mobilise support against oppressive states, such as happened in the 2010-2011 Arab Spring in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
Governments across the continent are aware of the economic potential of mobile telephony but are sometimes slow to implement the legal frameworks needed to allow phone companies to expand, Hope said.
"Many governments across Africa have developed broadband plans. The issue is that those plans very often just sit on a shelf, not being implemented," he said.
Africa's biggest mobile phone company is South Africa's MTN. Other major operators are South Africa's Vodacom and France's Orange.
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