The Communications Regulatory Authority (CRAN) says about 1400 out of 1800 schools, translating to 78%, in the country are without Information and Communication Technology infrastructure.
CRAN Chief Executive Officer Emilia Nghikembua said the organisation commissioned a Geographic Information System analysis to identify gaps in connectivity for the provision of telecommunications services in the country.
“The gap analysis also found that while population coverage stands at 89% for 3G and 79% for 4G, areas such as Kunene, Kavango East, and Kavango West have coverage below 50%,” she said.
Nghikembua’s remarks comes after the World Bank, in its Country Private Sector Diagnostic report, revealed that Namibia’s mobile broadband adoption at 36% and smartphone penetration of 53% lags its regional peers at 52% and 65%, respectively.
The report further indicated that weak market competition in the broadband market is costly, whereas 1 month gigabyte of prepaid data in Namibia costs an average of U$8,3 (N$131.47) compared to U$4.7 in South Africa and U$4.3 in Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Brenton Woods institution recommended that the country’s market concentration should be reduced while facilitating the entry of new operators which could enhance investments and technology, thus improving service delivery and affordability.
“Our sector review report issued in 2021, already flagged most of the findings in the World Bank report. It also shows that while the rest of Africa has seen rapidly declining mobile broadband prices, in Namibia, prices have increased. Namibia slipped in the African Affordability ranking from 4th cheapest in Q1 2016, to the 33rd cheapest country in Q1 2021 for 5GB per month. The report also found that our ICT sector was one of the leaders in Africa as recently as five years ago,” she said.
“Namibia lost its leading role in Africa because of state-driven consolidation in the sector and the significant reduction in competition. To this end, we have made recommendations on how to address these matters, which includes the privatisation of Mobile Telecommunications Limited (MTC) and Telecom Namibia, reduction of voice and data tariffs, and the operationalisation of the universal service fund. Broadband prices are high and download speeds low in comparison to other SADC countries,” Nghikembua added.
She, however, remained optimistic that Namibia can regain its position, but “needs to restructure the sector and investigate ways to attract private sector investment and to improve the level of competition.”
