Kenya’s mobile phone penetration crested the 100 per cent mark, says the Communications Authority of Kenya.
Kenya has now joined three other African countries, Tunisia, Namibia, and Morocco, as the 4th country to cross the 100 percent market in mobile penetration in Africa.
According to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) statistics, mobile penetration rose by 2.3 percentage points to hit 100.1 per cent. This increase has been attributed to most users owning more than one SIM card.
According to the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey (KIHBS), atleast 30 percent of mobile users in Kenya own more than one SIM card. This translates to about 1.3 SIM cards per subscriber.
Meanwhile, the value of mobile money transfers have hit Kshs. 2 trillion for the first time. Here are some of the stats as released by the CAK:
- Mobile Commerce Transactions: Kshs. 526.9 million (8.8% increase from last quarter)
- Number of Mobile Transactions: 730 million (1.2% increase from last quarter)
- Person-to-Person Transfers: Kshs. 718.2 billion
- Active Mobile Subscriptions: 46.6 million (2.4% increase from last quarter)
- Active Data Subscriptions: 41.8 million (2.7% increase from last quarter)
- International Internet Bandwidth: 4, 623.30 Gbps (41.1% increase from last quarter)
Safaricom remains the dominant telcom. The market share stats stand as follows:
- Safaricom PLC: 64.2%
- Airtel Networks Ltd: 22.3%
- Telkom Kenya Ltd: 9%
- FinServe Africa Ltd: 4.2%
- Mobile Pay Ltd: 0.2%
Sema Mobile Services, which is owned 50% by MODE, exited the market during this period. Mobile data and Internet subscriptions have also seen an increase of 2.7 percent and now stand at 41.8 million. The growth of e-Commece is expected to drive the demand for data and Internet services in Kenya in 2019.
