Steady growth at par with forecasts for the sub-Saharan Africa region

In “The Mobile Economy, sub-Saharan Africa 2022” analysts of the GSM Association comment: “In 2021, mobile technologies and services generated around 8% of GDP across sub-Saharan Africa, a contribution that amounted to almost $140 billion ofeconomic value added. The mobile ecosystem also supported more than 3.2 million jobs (directly and indirectly) and made a substantial contribution to the funding of the public sector, with $16 billion raised through taxes on the sector. By 2025, mobile’s contribution will grow by approximately $16 billion (to almost $155 billion), as the countries in the region increasingly benefit from the improvements in productivity and efficiency brought about by the increased take-up of mobile services.”

According to Statistics Mauritius, in 2022, Mauritius had “two fixed-line telephone service providers, three mobile cellular service providers and eleven internet service providers. The total number of mobile cellular subscriptions between 2021 and 2022 increased by 6.4% from 1,971,300 to 2,096,800. Meanwhile, “the mobidensity (the number of mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 inhabitants) increased by 6.6%, from 156.0 to 166.3.” The International Bandwidth Usage in 2022 was 235,682 Megabits per second (Mbit/s) compared to 211,312 Mbit/s in 2021. And the usage per inhabitant progressed by 11.8% from 167,192 bits per second in 2021 to 186,872 bits per second in 2022. Furthermore, regarding employment in the sector, in large establishments it went up by 2.1%, from 16,950 (8,895 men and 8,055 women) in 2021 to 17,300 (8,970 men and 8,330 women) in 2022.

With regards to trade, the ICT sector offers “telecommunications services, wholesale and retail trade, and other activities such as call centres, software development, website development and hosting, multimedia, IT consulting and disaster recovery.” And, according to Statistics Mauritius, it contributed to added value of Rs 29,553 million to the economy in 2022.

The development of the array of mobile services such as mobile payments and applications for a host of services and institutions allows to predict a constant growth of the sector. In 2022, the top5 companies remained the same. The leader remaining Mauritius Telecom with a turnover of Rs 11.5 Bn (+5%) and Profit before tax of Rs 1.3 Bn (+66%). Second in rank, Emtel has also seen a 5% increase of its turnover (Rs 3.24 Bn).

Mauritius does not escape global trends such as the roll-out of 5G. As the country seeks to position itself as a hub in multiple areas for the sub-Saharan African region, the telcos and the ICT sector in general is set to continue expanding and opening new avenues for B2B or B2C activities for a tech-savvy population.