Data by the World Bank Group shows that 9 in 10 people in Sub-Saharan Africa are not covered by a 5G network, and basic Internet access is also the lowest in the region, with only around one-third of the population online.
Beyond this region, according to the GSMA, almost one billion people in Africa do not use mobile Internet, representing 63% of the population.
While mobile broadband coverage has expanded across metropolitan centres, the rural and partially urban populations remain severely constrained by a dual challenge: the physical coverage gaps in deep rural zones and infrastructure deficits that make expanding standard tower networks financially unviable.
The World Bank Group further notes that infrastructure works, such as laying fibre-optic cables underground, are expensive, while revenues are low due to sparse populations and limited purchasing power. For Fieldbase, closing this divide requires departing from traditional capital-intensive deployment and embracing agile, hybrid engineering architectures.
The challenge
