Sub-Saharan Africa is at a communications crossroads. After decades of relative isolation due to poor telecommunications
infrastructure, projects building mobile and high-speed Internet
networks for the region’s more than 900 million people are being
completed with astonishing speed. As cellular phone coverage expands, mobile devices are becoming more common: 79 percent of
people in sub-Saharan Africa are likely to have mobile phones by
2020, according to Frost & Sullivan, up from 52 percent in 2012. By
2016, mobile broadband connections (such as 4G) are expected to
quadruple from their 2012 level to 160 million.