Zambia: ZICTA reports marginal decline in mobile subscriptions for 2022
March 13th 2023
Mobile subscriptions in Zambia declined marginally in 2022, the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) has reported. According to the regulator at the end of 2022 there were a total of 19.8 million mobile subscriptions in the country, down from 20.2 million a year earlier, with the decline mainly attributable to ‘the significant number of SIM cards that were deactivated relative to the new activations during the review period in a bid to increase compliance to the SIM registration guidelines issued by the Authority as well as efforts to curb the surge in fraudulent activities carried out on mobile cellular platforms’.
Despite the drop, the ZICTA reported that the country’s mobile sector saw an 18% year-on-year increase in revenues, with total turnover increasing to ZMW7.8 billion (USD386 million), from ZMW6.6 billion in 2021. Meanwhile, although airtime remained the largest contributor to mobile network operator’s revenues – accounting for 45.2% of the total – the regulator noted that in 2022 data services accounted for 36.9% of the total, up from 30.5% a year earlier.
Looking ahead, the ZICTA has said it has ‘a positive outlook in the general uptake and use of ICT services’ for 2023. To that end, the watchdog has said it expects mobile subscriptions to rise to around 20.4 million by the end of this year, and 21.3 million by end-2024. Such growth is expected, the ZICTA said, on ‘the backdrop of increased investments by operators in the capacity and coverage of their networks, competitive pricing outcomes on the market as well as general improvement in demand for ICT services among other attributes’.
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