Overall, Africa’s mobile market has probably been the fastest growing of any region in the world over the past five years, and mobile access has grown twice as rapidly as the global average.

It took the African continent 100 years to accumulate 28 million fixed lines – an average access rate of 3 per 100 inhabitants – but this was overtaken by mobile connections in 2001, and with 137 million mobile subscribers in 2005 mobiles outnumbered fixed lines by more than five to one.