Recently, Dr. Isa Pantami; the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, while speaking during a virtual training conference organized by the World Bank revealed Nigeria’s new broadband plan. The new plan for Nigeria’s broadband for 2020-2025 will have download speed targets of a minimum of 25Mbps in urban areas and 10Mbps in rural areas. The new plan also promises to have an effective coverage that would be available to at least 90 percent of the country’s population by 2025 and at a price that doesn’t exceed 390 naira for 1GB of data. Although the country might be putting plans in place and has been experiencing an increase in broadband penetration, it has the most expensive internet in the world.
According to a report by Surfshark; a Virtual Private Network firm, Nigeria has the most expensive internet in the world. In its report called the Digital Quality of Life report 2020, Nigeria took the position of 85th out of the 85 countries listed in the report. In this report, the amount of time that people needed to work to be able to afford the cheapest data plans available in the listed countries was made known. In this report, the price of data was divided by the average hourly income in the 85 countries being studied and this was used to make decisions.
Nigeria came last in this report. This automatically means that it has the most expensive data service in the world. South Africa was ranked 34th (it has the cheapest data in Africa, according to the report), Tunisia ranked 64th, Algeria ranked 66th, Morocco ranked 71st, and Kenya ranked 74th out of the 85 countries that was used in this report.
The report by Surfshark made it known that it would take the average Nigerian 27 minutes and 55 seconds to be able to afford data of 1GB compared to the global average figure of 10 minutes, and 33 hours 42 minutes of work to be able to afford the cheapest broadband plan compared to the global average of 48 minutes.
Although the Digital Quality of Life report 2020 ranks Nigeria the country with the most expensive data in the world, another report by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Inclusive Internet Index ranks Nigeria 25th out of the 100 countries listed with the most affordable internet. Nigeria’s position according to this report is above other African countries like South Africa, Ghana, Botswana and Cameroun.
Although there are plans to increase network availability in Nigeria and affordability in Nigeria, many people would take sides with Surfshark’s report and oppose the Economist Intelligence Unit’s report, because there are more reasons to believe Nigeria has the most expensive data in the world. So tell us what you think by leaving a comment.
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab 
