Over the past few years, Africa is experiencing a resurgence, especially in the area of mobile services. Africa contains some of the world’s fastest growing economies, and the mobile sector is an essential contributor of this growth.

MEF Africa is releasing a series of country specific market reports – the first of which highlights Kenya, home of the phenomenally successful m-Pesa payment system!

The African mobile market in 2013 had a combined value of around US$ 60 billion, contributing 3.5% to the continents GDP. It is forecast to quadruple in seven years up to US$245 billion in 2020.

Just over a year ago, MEF opened an African office in Johannesburg to serve as a hub for their growing African membership. MEF Africa teamed up with KPMG to do an in-depth analysis of 3 of the key markets in Africa: Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. For each country they examined the opportunities, challenges, and business optimism related to mobile content and mobile commerce.

Here is a snapshot from the Kenya country report.

Optimism
Kenyan mobile leaders are quite confident in the future growth of the sector, with over two thirds saying they are “optimistic”.

Areas of opportunity
Not surprisingly for a country which such an advanced mobile money system, the largest opportunities are seen to be in the area of mobile payments, with mobile advertising second.

Challenges
The survey also looked at the greatest challenges seen by the mobile leaders in the Kenyan market. Interestingly, the two top challenges related directly to mobile operators – first was the level of operator fees that are charges, and second was the overall capacity of the networks.

The full study is available to MEF members. To learn more about MEF Africa, visit the MEF Africa website.

MEF Africa is continuing to work on country specific reports for South Africa and Nigeria. If you would like to participate, you can take the survey now.