Angola, Botswana, Mauritius and Mozambique are a bunch of pretty diverse markets. As often pointed out before, they can be roughly grouped into the well-developed markets of Botswana and Mauritius, which have certain characteristics in common, and the less developed markets of Angola and Mozambique, which likewise have some characteristics in common. However, even these comparisons have many flaws.

The biggest movement within the Southern Africa report this quarter is the increase in our pessimism about Mauritius’ mobile market. The report was none too optimistic on the subject last quarter, but with the slowing growth having finally developed into actual contraction for both operators, we have decided to change our forecasts to reflect a stagnating market even over the next five years. All competition appears to have left both operators, and there are no signs that the regulator is about to liven things up with a new operator or improved regulations to ensure effective competition.

Botswana’s growth is also slowing, but with its penetration continuing to climb, reaching approximately 99% at the end of June 2009, such slowing is absolutely natural and to be expected. For the level of penetration within the country, Botswana is still showing really very strong growth. It is also moving to take advantage of new international bandwidth provided by the SEACOM cable, by setting up connections through neighbouring countries. This should benefit the communications market as a whole and the broadband market in particular. As across Africa, Botswana’s broadband market is very much in its nascent stages, but with the good levels of education and infrastructure in the country, it has better potential to grow sooner than many others.

Angola, usually the fastest grower in our Southern Africa report, has had a slight blip in Q209 that has seen Mozambique outperform it. Angola’s mobile subscribers only expanded by 2.9% during the quarter, whereas Moxambique saw a 7.8% growth in its mobile market.

In fact, in a quarter in which many mobile markets have seen some unfortunate trends on growth rates and ARPUs, things have looked pretty good for Mozambique, usually something of an underperformer thanks to its poor infrastructure and general poverty. Vodacom’s ARPUs, already about as low as they could go, actually improved.