Burundi: ARTC reveals Internet penetration rate is below 10%

September 3rd 2019

Africa, Burundi, network

Compared to other East African countries, Burundi is stalling on the Internet. The penetration rate is very low. It is less than 10%.

It was the acting director general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority and Control (ARTC), Hermalas Nahimana, who revealed it last week at a workshop on the drafting of a law regulating information and communication technologies in the face of rapid global technological innovation.

This situation – which seems illogical in view of the government’s investments in fiber optics and the establishment of a universal service fund for telecom infrastructures in rural and remote areas – is justified by the high cost of Internet access, according to Christian Ntahondi, the head of the tariff control service and competes with the ARCT.

Last May, Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), in its surveys, estimated that Burundi is one of the countries in Africa where the cost of GB mobile broadband is the most affordable. That’s 3.3 USD. For the ARTC, this cost is still quite high and inaccessible to the majority of Burundians. Restricting thereby the transformative power of the Internet.

Christian Ntahondi also justified the low rate of Internet penetration by the high cost of smartphones.

Source: Agence Ecofin Back