ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the prepaid market in Africa and its challenges and suggests ways in which the relevant actors can improve the market for the benefits of African consumers. The prepaid market is the prevailing market to provide mobile subscriptions. The chapter offers a number of suggestions to improve the mobile market for the benefit of consumers including consolidation of operators to improve the rate of investment, reducing the cost of top up, and reducing churn. Europe and Africa have a number of similarities as continents, namely a wide diversity in geography and languages as well as a proliferation of small independent states. While the mobile market in Europe is more developed, it offers a number of lessons for Africa. In mature economies, sales and marketing costs can consume up to 25% of an operator’s revenue, so reducing this line item through a consolidation is an attractive proposition.
