We have not seen any dramatic changes in our Southern African markets this quarter. The first quarter of 2009 saw the continuation of established trends in the mobile markets of Angola, Botswana, Mauritius and Mozambique.

Botswana saw its growth continue to slow, with one of the operators actually losing some subscribers during Q109. All this is very much in line with the fact that Botswana has a fairly mature market that is approaching saturation. The operator will need to step up their promotion of value-added services if they want to see continued growth, because it is not going to come from customer numbers.

Mauritius, although having lower penetration than Botswana, is still seeing its mobile market growth decline more rapidly, and this decline again accelerated in Q109. Mauritius’ mobile market seems to have lost energy and begun to stagnate, and it is hard to see what could revive it besides more competition.

2009 will be a challenging year for operators there, as the country is likely to feel keenly the effect of the global economic slowdown, to which the island nation is heavily exposed. However, the completion of the LION cable project is good news for the telecommunications market, as the cable will bring new international bandwidth to the islands, reducing costs.

Angola is still the best performer out of the four, in BMI’s opinion. Penetration is low and growth has been strong, despite the fact that average revenue per user (ARPU) levels have remained fairly high, or at least high compared with many other countries in Africa. Angola has also seen probably the most exciting developments to come up in the region this quarter. Angola Telecom announced a big spending plan that should see the reach of fixed-line and broadband services extended a great deal over the coming years. It has also launched an undersea cable project in conjunction with a number of alternative operators, signalling the country’s willingness for more market liberalisation.

Mozambique is also still growing, but at a slower rate than Angola and many other states. Mobile penetration is low, but the market does not seem to be able to get over the hump and into the middle phase of high growth. While many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have high levels of poverty, Mozambique is one of the poorest, and this may be forming something of a barrier to the rapid growth that has been seen in other markets in the last two years.