Infrastructure deployments
02.1   Smart city
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African cities began to embrace the smart city concept several years back, and we are seeing a variety of approaches to solving urban-specific issues and challenges: ranging from an “industrial” response to the development of targeted digital applications to meeting specific needs.

Building smart cities as urban populations boom Africa as a whole is having to contend with a massive surge in its urban population, with some forecasts predicting in the order of 450 to 600 million additional city dwellers by 2040. As a result, a host of smart city developments will be in response to future urban [...]

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Infrastructure financing

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Infrastructure deployments
02.2   Infrastructure financing
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In Africa more than anywhere else, government financing – and government support for financing – is vital to ensuring large-scale digital infrastructure rollouts. If this aid represents a substantial percentage of spending on telecommunications networks and tools (12% between 2013 and 2016, amounting to 7 billion USD), it stills need to become more efficient.

Rising consequences Network rollouts are invariably a central concern in public policies for digital development in Africa. If government financing for infrastructure is currently being allocated primarily to other areas, and particularly transport and energy, the weight given to ICT has increased considerably over the past several years – going from only slightly more than [...]

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Strategy for digital economy

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Infrastructure deployments
02.3   Strategy for digital economy
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Establishing national digital schemes and strategies in support of the digital transformation reflects government authorities’ desire to have a role in building the digital society. But achieving these ambitions often goes by way of public-private partnerships.

National strategy or programme: a public policy constant Public policies are based on a programmatic foundation defined by a national strategy or programme. This is true in every area of public policy, and has extended to the digital arena for several years now. Something which is by no means confined to the African continent. The [...]

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Spectrum

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Infrastructure deployments
02.4   Spectrum
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Having access to harmonised frequencies is key to avoid being on the sidelines of the digital revolution. Despite regional efforts and national programmes, the process of freeing up frequency bands from the digital dividends, to then allocate them to high-speed Internet services, is still underway in Africa, more than three years after the ITU deadline. Despite which, discussions over 5G frequencies have also begun, in the run-up to WRC-19, even if many African nations are still seeking to make the most of LTE.

The challenge of freeing up digital dividend frequencies for 4G WRC-2007 and 2012 adopted resolutions on the allocation of 800 MHz and 700 MHz band digital dividend frequencies, respectively. The transition from analogue to digital broadcasting was due to be complete by June 2015 for the UHF band, and in 2020 in some countries for the VHF band. [...]

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Satellite

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Infrastructure deployments
02.5   Satellite
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Connectivity is still a major issue in Africa, and satellite can provide at least a partial response. Various solutions are being used to deliver high-speed access, mobile backhaul, and for satisfying businesses’ and administrations’ coverage needs. The pace of development is accelerating, with both veteran and alternative players, while competition remains to a large degree based on price

Real market potential

Satellite enjoys a sizeable share of the African market in the large enterprise and government services segment. Added to which, geographical and economic criteria are merging. It is primarily the lower middle class (living on 4 to 10 USD a day) and the upper middle class (over 10 USD a day) that are interested in Internet access via satellite. These two categories together represent around 15% of the African population, but 80% of them live in cities, which are generally covered by traditional wireline Internet access solutions. So, there is a potential addressable market for satellite that is estimated at 3% of those populations living on more than 4 USD a day per person, in rural areas.

In addition to providing broadband access, and targeting business and government markets, mobile connectivity is a major issue. 4G and, in future, 5G base stations and distributed servers will need to be powered. Providing connectivity to the transport sector can also create additional opportunities, in the ground transport, aeronautical, rail and maritime sectors.

Lastly, increasing connection speeds, and offering competitively priced plans (bandwidth and devices) would allow the satellite industry to forge itself a solid foothold in the market.

Satellite constellations or HTS?

There are a number of low-earth orbit constellation projects that are promising to reduce the digital divide, especially in Africa. There are solutions for increasing the density of beams to boost capacity, combined with a further reduction in latency (of around 20 ms), that aim to be a disruptive, notably by targeting mobile backhaul and Internet access needs in sparsely populated area, in developing countries.

Middle-earth orbit (MEO) constellations are sold as more overall solutions to Africa’s connectivity issues, in particular thanks to the lower latency enabled by operating at a lower altitude than geostationary solutions.

A similar approach to increasing capacity is being delivered by High-Throughput Systems (HTS) operating in a geostationary position. The current orders of magnitude for these platforms are 100 Gbit/s, and should increase to the Terabit range.

 
Main target: transport and mobile networks
Satellite backhaul
Source : SATINET, ESA's ARTES Programmes
 
Consolidated coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa
Eutelsat's Konnect Africa service coverage
Next chapter
Access and networks 
IDATE DIGIWORLD YEARBOOK AFRICA 2019
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