ECOWAS‘S INFRASTRUCTURE: A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE

**Table 4.1  Benchmarking ICT infrastructure across regional communities**

||**ECOWAS**|**CEMAC**|**COMESA**|**EAC**|**SADC**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Broadband subscribers (per 100 inhabitants)|0.03|0.01|0.04|0.02|0.36|
|International Internet bandwidth (per capita)|16|11|9|11|19|
|Internet subscribers (per 100 inhabitants)|0.24|0.06|0.09|0.05|0.53|
|Main telephone lines outside largest city (per 100 inhabitants)|0.39|0.20|0.53|0.24|1.89|
|Mobile telephone subscribers (per 100 inhabitants)|25|22|12|21|31|
|Prepaid mobile price basket (US$ per month)|14.04|15.11|9.09|12.18|11.32|
|Price of a three-minute call to United States (US$)|0.83|5.68|2.20|1.37|1.50|
|Price of 20-hour Internet basket (US$ per month)|79.98|67.97|50.91|95.70|75.60|
|Price of fixed telephone price basket (US$ per month)|9.35|12.59|6.85|13.33|13.27|

Source: Ampah and others 2009.

Note: CEMAC = Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa; COMESA = Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa; EAC = East African Community; SADC = Southern African Development Community.

ICT access and prices at the regional level mask significant variations (table 4.2). Broadly speaking there are two groups of countries within the ECOWAS area. The first group—comprising Cape Verde, Côte d‘Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal—have relatively high mobile penetration (generally in excess of 30 subscribers per 100 population), mobile footprint (generally in excess of 70 percent of the population), and international bandwidth (generally above 40 bits per capita). A second group— comprising the remaining countries—has substantially worse access indicators across the board, with mobile penetration generally below 20, a mobile footprint generally below 60 percent of the population, and international bandwidth generally below 20 bits per capita. Pricing structures also vary substantially, though not systematically across the two groups, with the price of a prepaid monthly basket varying from $4 in Guinea to $20 in Sierra Leone.

As far as fixed-line international calls are concerned, it is somewhat cheaper to call within ECOWAS than to other parts of Africa, but still expensive in absolute terms. International fixed-line calls within ECOWAS, at around $0.73 per minute, are much cheaper than calls from ECOWAS member states to other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (around $0.92 per minute) (figure 4.2), except in the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).<sup>4</sup> Nevertheless, the range is huge, with an intra-ECOWAS call costing around $ 0.26 in Côte d‘Ivoire and $1.20 in Cape Verde, which is geographically isolated from the rest of the ECOWAS members. In Côte d‘Ivoire and Ghana, it is cheaper to call the United States than it is to call within the community. Ghanaians pay about $0.12 per minute to call the United States—the lowest such rate in the region; but to call another ECOWAS member state they pay three times more than their neighbors.

> 4 The member states of ECCAS are Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe. A subgroup of these countries forms the CEMAC (Economic Community of Central African States) countries, composed of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

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