SUDAN’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE

# **Achievements**

All parts of Sudan have made impressive progress in the ICT sector since the early 2000s, placing access and service penetration rates on par with African peers. In the early 2000s, only around 60 percent of the population was covered by a GSM<sup>7</sup> signal. As of 2010, over 80 percent of the population is covered by a GSM signal. Mobile subscription rates have risen from less than 1 percent in 2000 to 33 percent in 2009. Growth in mobile telephony has been impressive and Sudan’s is among the most rapidly growing in Africa. Until recently, most of the development in the sector was in the northern part of Sudan .Only a few other countries in East Africa—Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda—have achieved mobile penetration of around 20 percent or more. Internet penetration has also grown significantly but slightly lags behind resource-rich and middle-income African countries. International bandwidth in all parts of Sudan has grown exponentially and exceeds all benchmarks except middle-income countries **.** The landline sector has not demonstrated much growth, meanwhile, in part because of an overwhelming preference for mobile phones. This trend is broadly consistent across Africa as a whole.

**Table 15. All parts of Sudan compare favorably to the average African country in terms of ICT access and prices**

||||All parts of|Sudan|Resource-<br>rich<br>countries|Low-<br>income<br>countries|Middle-<br>income<br>countries|Sub-<br>Saharan<br>Africa|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Indicator|Unit||2000|2008|2008|2008|2008|2008|
|Access|||||||||
|GSM coverage|% population<br>signal|under|60|80|78|63|96|72|
|International bandwidth|Bits/person||0.06|35|18|25|209|39|
|Internet|Users/100 pe|ople|0.1|5.9|9|3.5|7|5.5|
|Landline|Subscribers/|100 people|1.2|1.09|0.9|0.8|9.2|1.4|
|Mobile phone|Subscribers/|100 people|0.05|33|38.2|24.4|95.3|33.1|
|Prices|||2008|2009|2008|2008|2008|2008|
|Price of monthly mobile basket||US $|4.8|3|17.07|11|9.24|12.06|
|Price of monthly fixed-line basket||US $|4.4|5.3|15.12|10.43|11.41|12.38|
|Price of monthly fixed broadband||US $|47|25|231.98|286.72|57.42|208.71|
|Price of a call to the United States|per minute|US $||0.42|0.92|0.69|0.56|0.7|
|Price of an inter-Africa call per mi|nute|US $||0.42|1.16|0.94|1.06|0.99|

_Source:_ Adapted from Minges and others 2009 using data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, Sudatel, Zain, and World Bank ICT At-aGlance.

_Source:_ Data for landline subscribers is for 2005 taken from the Central Bureau of Statistics, South Sudan; Mobile phone subscriptions based on World Bank staff estimates for 2011; _Note:_ Landline and mobile subscriber data are based on information from Sudan; the others are based on Sudan aggregates. These are representative of Sudan because until recently South Sudan did not have access to adequate ICT services. Most of the ICT connectivity existed only in Sudan.

Analysis of 2006 data for all parts of Sudan suggests that almost 98 percent of the population could access mobile telephony on a commercially viable basis (figure 26). This result is based on the assumption that 4 percent of local income in each area could be captured as revenue for voice telephony

> 7 Global system for mobile communications.

> <sup>35</sup>