Cisco Predicts Mobile to be Africa's Main Route to the Net by 2019

According to the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index 2015, internet traffic in the Middle East and Africa will be bolstered by mobile phones by the year 2019.

Cisco expects the number of internet users in 2019 to stand at 425 million in the Middle East and Africa, which would be 27% of the population.

The index reports that, there will be 2.1 billion networked devices in 2019, up from 1.4 billion in 2014 and 78% of all networked devices will be mobile-connected.

Moreover, smartphones will account for 31% (652.0 million) of all networked devices in 2019, compared to 14% (196.6 million) in 2014.

Even with the anticipated growth of the smartphones, non-smartphones will still have a major role to play and will account for 38.3% (818.9 million) of all networked devices in 2019, compared to 68% (943.6 million) in 2014.

David Meads, Vice President, Cisco Africa said, "We are entering into a very dynamic technological era and the rapid increase in connected devices will benefit a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, transportation, oil and gas, utilities, government, healthcare, sports and entertainment, education, in terms of increased efficiency, reduced costs, and, most important, improvement of the lives of citizens."

Overall, the IP traffic from these devices will have a compound annual growth rate of 44% by 2019.

Cisco said that personal devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, faster broadband speeds, and the adoption of advanced video services will drive this growth.