Yahsat, the leading satellite communications provider in the UAE, announced on 24 September 2018 the launch of its satellite broadband service, YahClick, in the West African country of Côte d’Ivoire in order to increase Internet access where only 27 percent of the population is online.
The YahClick service offers broadband Internet connectivity to businesses, government agencies, and remote areas of the country and is a means to bridging the Digital Divide in developing and emerging economies like Côte d’Ivoire .
“This broadband satellite service promises to improve telecommunication capacities across the country which until now have been very weak,” Yahsat’s Africa manager, Yannick Kashila, told AFP.
In the Côte d’Ivoire, the leading economy in Francophone West Africa, Internet penetration remains stagnant at only 27 percent. In rural areas, only two percent of homes have access, compared with 16 percent in urban areas.
“Today in 2018, having good Internet connectivity has a direct influence on the economic development of a developing nation,” said Morris Michael Kofi, head of Cee-Net Technologies, which supplies Internet technologies and is partnering with Yahsat in the Côte d’Ivoire .
“A 10-percent increase of broadband connectivity can have a positive impact equating to around 1.4 percent of GDP in a developing country,” he told AFP.
Mobile telephony currently accounts for around 8.0 percent of the Côte d’Ivoire’s GDP and the telecommunications sector is one of the country’s biggest employers.
The daily volume of financial transactions conducted over mobile networks, such as payments or money transfers, in the Côte d’Ivoire is the equivalent of U.S.$29,000,000.
There are three operators dominating the mobile market in the Côte d’Ivoire: France Telecom’s Orange, South Africa’s MTN, and the Ivorian-Saudi joint venture Moov.
