In this analysis, Opensignal looks at the experience of smartphone users across the 15 markets in Africa with the highest numbers of unique mobile subscribers, according to GSMA Intelligence. Opensignal users in South Africa enjoy the fastest download speeds and the most consistent quality of mobile services in Africa, while also connecting to 4G and 5G services for the highest proportion of time. Meanwhile, Morocco leads for Upload Speed Experience, Games Experience, and Voice App Experience.
Opensignal analysis also demonstrates that in several African markets, more than 40% of smartphone users use the Internet when connected to mobile services only (and not to Wi-Fi) — with Ghana seeing nearly 60% of mobile-only Internet users. This reflects the relative lack of fixed infrastructure in Africa and its mobile-first character. Despite this, 3G is still the most commonly used mobile network technology in some African markets, with smartphone users in Angola and Ethiopia spending more than 40% of their time on 3G.
South Africa comes first for Download Speed Experience with the fastest download speeds among the 15 analyzed markets. Its Download Speed Experience score clocks in at 27.3Mbps — 16.8% faster than second-placed Morocco. Egypt and Kenya are in a statistical tie for third place, with scores of 16.2-16.3Mbps. Morocco leads for Upload Speed Experience, with a score of 7.5Mbps — beating Algeria by 1.3Mbps (21.7%), as South Africa and Kenya jointly take third place, with scores of 5.7-5.8Mbps. Meanwhile, Sudan brings up the rear for both Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience, with scores of 5.7Mbps and 2Mbps, respectively.
Smartphone users in South Africa enjoy the most consistent mobile network experience in Africa, as the market leads with a score of 50.9%. This is 4.9 percentage points ahead of second-placed Egypt and 5.6 percentage points ahead of third-placed Morocco. These scores reflect the percentage of tests in which our smartphone users’ experience on a network is sufficient to support the requirements of more common demanding applications, such as video calling, uploading an image to social media, or using smart home applications. Tests combine different experience indicators such as download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet discard, and time to first byte.
In Ghana, Sudan, and Côte d'Ivoire, the percentage of successful tests was below 10%, with Ethiopia and Cameroon scoring as low as 0.1%. These relatively low scores are likely due to the high usage of old 3G technology in those markets.
Looking at Opensignal experiential metrics, South Africa and Egypt are joint highest scorers for Video Experience with a score of 54.5-54.9 points on a 100-point scale. Along with Morocco and Kenya, they rate as Fair (48-58) for video services. This means our smartphone users are, on average, able to stream video at 720p or better with satisfactory loading times and substantial stalling. The remaining markets all placed in the Poor (below 48) category.
Three North African markets are frontrunners for Games Experience. Morocco takes the top spot with a score of 56.7 points on a 100-point scale — commanding a lead of over 10 points over second-placed Egypt and of 16 points over Algeria. All of these markets place in the Poor (40-65) category — which means, many users feel a lack of controllability. Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire score the highest among Sub-Saharan African markets — but all of them rate as Very Poor (below 40) for Games Experience. This means almost all users experience a noticeable delay within the game, with most of them not feeling like they have control of the gameplay.
Morocco also comes first for Voice App Experience with a score of 74.5 points on a 100-point scale — the only market with an Acceptable (74-80) rating, meaning some users are satisfied and listeners are generally able to comprehend without repetition. Egypt is the runner-up, 1.6 points behind the leader, while South Africa claims the third spot in Africa, with a score of 69 points. These two markets place in the Poor (66-74) category, along with Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria. Meanwhile, our smartphone users in Kenya and Tanzania experience Very Poor (60-66) voice app services, while those in the remaining markets — Unintelligible (45-60).
Slower speeds and worse experiential scores for some African markets is because smartphone users in those markets still spend a large proportion of time connected to older network generations — like 3G, or even 2G — that are much less capable than 4G. Opensignal smartphone users in Ethiopia and Angola where mobile experience scores tend to be low spend more than 40% of their time connected to 3G services. By contrast, users in Uganda, Ghana, and Sudan — more than 30% of the time.
Limited spectrum bandwidth, together with heavy use of 3G connectivity and lower maximum data transfer rates adversely affects the quality of the overall mobile network experience in African markets. Even 2G is still notable in some African markets, for example, our smartphone users spend more than 5% of their time connected to 2G in Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania. However, in South Africa and Morocco, users spend just 1.9-2% of their time on 2G. Notably, our smartphone users in Sudan, Morocco, Angola, and Cameroon spend the highest proportion of time with no signal among African markets, ranging from 3.3 to 4.9% of the time, which makes connecting to mobile services even more challenging.
The extent of 3G usage is due to the cost of mobile infrastructure (backhaul, security at base stations), energy (fuel and generators) and local deployment regulator fees — along with many users still reliant on older and simpler mobile devices, not enabled for newer generations. Solar-power cells are one of the potential solutions for deploying base stations in remote areas, while the production of low-cost and more affordable smartphones can help users access mobile services more easily and boost their experience when using the Internet for work, education, and entertainment.
In Ethiopia, Angola, and Sudan smartphone users connect to 4G services for less than half of the time. At the other end of the scale, South Africa is the leader in terms of time our smartphone users spend connected to 4G or better services — 85.6% of the time, 7.9 percentage points ahead of Egypt, and around twice as often as those in Ethiopia. Ethiopia only liberalised its mobile market in 2020 and its second operator Safaricom launched in October 2022. This means the investment from the newly licensed MNO is still relatively new compared to other African markets.
For many Internet users worldwide, especially in low and middle-income markets, mobile connectivity is the main — and often only — means of access. This is due to the limited access to relatively costly fixed broadband Internet services, especially in rural and remote areas. Opensignal data demonstrates that in many African markets, users connect to Wi-Fi services very sporadically — our smartphone users spend only 8.7% of their time on Wi-Fi in Sudan, 11.9% in Ghana, and 12.5% in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On the other hand, our smartphone users in South Africa spend the most time on Wi-Fi across the observed markets — 58.6% — followed by Egypt with nearly half of the time connected to Wi-Fi services. These are average values across all smartphone users.
When we segment users by the amount of time they spend connected to Wi-Fi, Opensignal data shows a substantial share of mobile-only Internet users, who never connect to Wi-Fi services and rely only on mobile connectivity for data transfers. In eight out of the 15 analyzed markets, more than 40% of mobile-only users never connect to Wi-Fi. In three markets — Uganda, Sudan, and Ghana — more than half of our smartphone users only use mobile networks. By contrast, less than 10% of our smartphone users in South Africa or Egypt only use mobile connectivity.
In the future, 5G will change the mobile experience across Africa
Several markets in Africa have already deployed 5G networks, like South Africa, Nigeria or Kenya. At the moment, the presence of 5G connectivity is poor on the continent, with only South Africa having a more substantial number of 5G subscriptions, while others observe only several thousand of 5G users. Further development of seamless and reliable mobile connectivity in Africa is essential for the markets’ economic growth, especially given the high numbers of mobile-only users.
The road to ubiquitous 5G in Africa is likely to be a long one, as access to 4G is still not universal and many users still rely on 2G and 3G networks to connect to the mobile Internet. Opensignal will continue to analyze improvements in the African mobile network experience as 4G becomes commonplace and 5G grows from its current small base.
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