Little did they know things will move much more quickly. Mobile penetration as at year end 2009 was 67%-slightly double the penetration level predicted by the millennium challenge account 3 whole years before the target date...AMAZING!!!What is more interesting right now; is the extent to which mobile phones are being used to accomplish so many other things apart from just making and receiving calls and sending and receiving text messages to. People are making good use of the functionality their mobiles offer thanks in part to the mobile telecoms companies.
A case in point--Ghana has less than 1% internet/broadband penetration. But interestingly, out of this 1% who have some level of access to the internet, 98% of them access the internet through their mobile phones. Indeed the internet is coming to Ghana/Africa through mobile technology as predicted by some analysts. Again, the phenomenon of mobile transfers has caught on like wildfire on this continent. There are 3 million more people with MPESA accounts in Kenya than all accountholders in all the banks put together. The last I checked, a whopping 2 billion dollars or so had been transferred so far using the platform provided by safaricom. Safaricom has slightly more than half of its 12 million subscribers signed up to MPESA.
The story is no different in Ghana-with the launch of MTN mobilemoney in June last year and Zap by Zain pretty shortly, the figures will likely climb by end of year as more and more people come on board onto the two platforms. MTN mobilemoney has proved to be quite robust so far.
Corporate Ghana has not been left out of the boon--ISPs have mushroomed countrywide, in-house mobile payment systems especially by the banks and other companies like Afric Xpress, market information services like Esoko, internet based payment systems and so many more such entities have all come up online...It's AMAZING!!!
Ghana and the continent of Africa have to stand up and embrace the fortunes that these new developments offer. Employment and all... PLAY UP!!!!!!
