A country with strong infrastructure, affordable services, and high digital literacy, enabling everyone to use fast and reliable mobile internet will have a perfect score (100) on the GSMA's Mobile Connectivity Index 2023. South Africa leads in Africa with 69.53.
Globally, Singapore is first, with a score of 93.7, setting the benchmark for mobile internet adoption. Only four African countries — South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Egypt — surpassed the global average score.
Tunisia, Ghana, and Nigeria scored below the global average.
The Mobile Connectivity Index analysed measured 173 countries' mobile internet adoption from 2014-2023, normalising indicators to a 0-100 scale for consistency. The factors assessed include infrastructure, affordability, digital literacy, and policy frameworks.
Surfshark's data reveals that 17.2b online accounts have been compromised globally since 2004, with African countries accounting for 250.7m (1.45%).
South Sudan has the highest number of breached online accounts in Africa, with over 89 million compromised accounts.
South Africa and Egypt follow with 0.2% and 0.13% of the global figure, respectively. Nigeria ranks fourth with 19.3 million breaches.
Although Africa's share of global breaches is relatively low, the potential harm is significant. Recently, unauthorised websites reportedly sold Nigerians' data, including NIN, BVN, and driver's licenses, for as little as ₦100.
These breaches pose serious privacy, financial security, and national safety risks, calling our attention to the urgent need for robust data protection measures.
In Q4 2023, Spectranet maintained its top position as Nigeria's biggest internet service provider with nearly 114k active subscribers, holding 43% of the market share. FiberOne followed with 10% of the market.
Starlink increased its subscriber base by 113% to claim the 3rd position with 9% of the market.
Here are Nigeria's top internet service providers by active subscribers in Q4 2023.
As of the end of September 2023, Starlink Nigeria had amassed a customer base of 11,207 active subscribers, growing 66% from 6,756 in June. It placed 4th in the market after Spectranet (113,747), Tizeti Network (19,126), and ipNX Nigeria (14,871).
As of February 2023, Airtel had the fastest Internet speed of all mobile operators in Nigeria at 22.42Mbps, followed by MTN with 21.71Mbps, and Glo with 8.70Mbps. 9mobile comes last with a speed of 8.32Mbps. Airtel's speed of 22.42Mbps was about 26% of Starlink's speed.
There were 90 Internet and social media disruptions across Africa between 2017 and 2021. The year 2019 had the highest disruptions with 25 across 16 countries.
Africa lost approximately $454 million and 2,802 hours between January and August 2021 to several forms of government-imposed social media shutdowns and Internet blackouts with Nigeria's Twitter shutdown recording the highest lost at $381.4 million.
Between September 2022 to August 2023, 3 of Nigeria's mobile Internet providers saw a combined 8 million increase in their active mobile Internet subscribers, with MTN gaining the most, followed by Globacom and Airtel. 9mobile on the other hand, recorded almost 1 million decline.
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