The Middle East and Africa Are Not Just One Monolithic Telecom Market

The Middle East and Africa are becoming harder to describe as a single telecom region because it now contains some of the world’s most advanced 5G and fibre markets alongside countries where mobile remains the primary, and often only realistic, path to internet access. That asymmetry is central to the analysis offered by Karim Yaici, Lead Industry Analyst for the Middle East and Africa at Ookla. In an interview with ICTbusiness Media - ICTbusiness.biz, he said that the region has “a lot of contrast”, not only between subregions but also within them. In his view, those differences are driven by economic conditions, user profiles, and the “maturity of the regulatory environment” across individual markets.

Compared with Europe, the most advanced part of the region remains the Gulf. Yaici notes that “The Gulf countries” were early 5G pioneers and have also invested heavily in fibre. The result is very strong performance on both fixed and mobile networks, with “five out of the six Gulf countries” ranking among the global leaders for mobile performance. That progress, he argues, has been underpinned by operator investment, government support, a more permissive regulatory regime, and users who can afford premium services and the latest devices. In other words, the Gulf developed under conditions that allowed earlier monetisation of advanced infrastructure, which marks an important difference from much of Europe and an even sharper one from sub-Saharan Africa.

North Africa, meanwhile, is entering a new stage. After a decade or more of development built around 3G and 4G, “2025 has been quite an important year” for the region, Yaici says. The shift is happening on two fronts. Fibre penetration is rising, while the “launch of 5G across four of the markets in North Africa” is accelerating technological catch-up. This is no longer a slow upgrade cycle. “They’re really catching up fast,” he says, arguing that operators there are benefiting from the fact that the software and hardware ecosystem supporting 5G is now far more mature than it was for the earliest adopters. That gives them a more efficient route into the next phase of mobile and fixed network modernisation.

The logic is very different in sub-Saharan Africa. There, as Yaici puts it, “mobile is the predominant way for the people to connect to the internet”, effectively compensating for the lack of extensive fixed infrastructure. Even so, the region is not uniform. South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya already have growing fixed broadband markets spanning cable, fixed wireless access, and fibre. But one of the most important shifts is happening in satellite connectivity. Yaici says a growing number of users are adopting satellite services as a substitute for fixed access, and Ookla’s analysis found that Starlink’s download performance was “better than all of the ISPs we looked at across all of sub-Saharan Africa”. While that reflects median performance rather than every user experience, he says LEO services can deliver speeds “equivalent to fibre”, making them “a good alternative” for both households and businesses in underserved areas.

Even so, Yaici does not see satellite as a replacement for mobile operators, at least not any time soon. LEO connectivity may be growing in popularity, but it is doing so “from a small base”, he cautions, and still represents only a small share of users and traffic. “The majority of the connectivity” in sub-Saharan Africa is still delivered by mobile operators, which remain the main channel for internet access. That is why questions of dependency on Starlink or other foreign satellite platforms cannot yet be separated from wider market development, regulatory reactions, and sovereignty concerns. Yaici believes Africa has “some room to create an alternative to Starlink”, but he adds that in terms of technology maturity, business models, and market readiness, “I don’t think we’re there yet”. That conclusion captures the core of his argument: the MEA region is not moving along one telecom trajectory, but along several at once, with fibre, 5G, mobile-first access, and satellite connectivity all playing different roles depending on the market.