GHANA OFFICIALLY has outgrown the West and Central Africa telecommunications report, making it one of the five countries from Africa to be given its own individual country report for telecoms this quarter.

The departure of Ghana was necessitated by the arrival of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who was included in the report for the first time.

Although it is a challenging market, it is also an exciting prospect for operators, as it is already quite a large market, and yet has an extremely low penetration, giving the promise of massive growth in the future.

The difficulty is that the precarious state of the economy and the security situation means that investors may need to wait some time for this enormous growth to really take off.

A market data section for DRC was included, as well as making forecasts for its mobile market and adding it to the Business Environment Rankings, taking the total number of African countries assessed in the Rankings to 22.

DRC has slotted in very close to the bottom of the table, with its incredible low country risk score negating the potential of its telecoms market.

This quarter has seen some other changes take place in the structure of this report, with, among other things, a comprehensive summary of the economic situation of the included countries brought forward to the front of the report, to complement the analysis of the Business Environment Rankings.

As for the other countries of the report, few have seen major developments in this latest update.

The duopoly in Cameroun continues, with Orange making up for the poor 2008 second quarter it had with a strong performance in the third quarter, and the strong competition in Cote d'Ivoire continuing to encourage good investment, although network quality and dropped calls are still a problem, here and elsewhere in the region.

Change has also been limited in Mauritania and Senegal.

Mali and Gabon have seen the most significant developments. Mali, hardly a star of the region, has seen real developments in the long rumoured part privatisation of Sotelma, with Moroccan incumbent and regional investor taking a stake.

This is good progress for telecom liberalisation in Mali, and the report has altered its Business Environment Rating accordingly.

Meanwhile in Gabon, still standing out as the only really developed market in this region, a third mobile licence has been auctioned, won by a little known outfit from Bahrain, expanding its presence in Africa. Further competition should help to spice up Gabon's market, and one hopes to see some more inventive value added services coming from this country.

Source: Daily Guide - Daily Guide