High mobile penetration contributes to economic growth

HKenya’s ICT sector has recorded remarkable growth in past decade driven by high mobile penetration and growth of mobile-based transactions. More than 90 percent of Kenyans have mobile phones while those who have access to internet services are estimated at 84 percent.

The high rate of mobile subscriptions is attributable to a drop in the price of smartphones as well as lower data charges. A report by Jumia shows that average smartphone prices declined by 116 per cent from KSh18 600 to KSh 8600 between 2014 and 2018. Similarly, the cost of data dropped from 3.7 percent of monthly per capita income to 1.3 percent of monthly per capita income for 500MB data.

Jumia says it has recorded more than 5 times growth in smart phone sales between 2014 and 2018. Nairobi and Mombasa recorded the highest sales volumes in that period.

According to the ecommerce company, 73 percent of transactions on their platform were done through mobile phones while 27 percent were done through desktop machines. In the same manner, 70 percent of the payments were made through mobile-money while the remaining 30 percent of payments done through card transactions and cash.

Kenya has over 200,000 mobile money agents. A report the Communication Authority shows that mobile money transactions worth KSh2.trillion were done between July and September 2018 equivalent to 24 percent of Kenya’s GDP.