Morocco and South Africa have been revealed as the two African countries with the fastest average internet speeds across the continent with a speed of 23.57Mbps and 19.20Mbps respectively.
Out of the 46 countries sampled, Nigeria ranked 16th on the list with an average speed of 11.55Mbps coming on the heels of Gabon and Congo at 11.70Mbps and 11.67Mbps internet speeds respectively.
This is according to the findings of a new report from SpeedChecker, which collects data from end-user devices running both Android and iOS.
While MTN was found as the fastest mobile network operator in South Africa, Airtel takes the lead in Nigeria as the fastest mobile network operator.
The company explains that measurements are “executed towards a content delivery network (CDN) that has a large geographical footprint and hosts a significant part of the content that is being accessed by the users”.
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“This ensures our results are a good approximation of the user’s actual quality of experience. All measurements must contain accurate location information using GPS or Wi-Fi geolocation methods,” it said.
“Measurements are considered only from apps that have been approved by SpeedChecker. Submitted measurements are checked to see if they are within expected ranges and additional security precautions are implemented to ensure measurement data is not being manipulated,” the company explained.
Top 10 countries in Africa for mobile download speeds
The fastest countries for mobile downloads after Morocco and South Africa are Tunisia, Mali and, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Malawi. Botswana is sixth, followed by Namibia, Madagascar, Liberia and Mauritius.
Of the 46 countries analysed for internet speeds by SpeedChecker, the Central African Republic scored last at 3.97Mbit/s. Mauritania and Libya didn’t perform much better, coming in second and third last respectively
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Furthermore, the report revealed South Africa comes fifth (5th) place when it comes to African countries with the best mobile coverage behind Mauritius, Comoros, Seychelles and Egypt.
On the other hand, Nigeria takes 12th place on the list of best mobile coverage with MTN offering the better coverage.
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Mauritius takes first place with a coverage score of 928 while Mauritius Telecom provides the better coverage in the country.
Comoros comes second place followed by Seychelles, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Swaziland, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Malawi closely followed by Nigeria.