The line chart illustrates how many people used mobile and fixed-line phones in Africa between 1994 and 2004.
Overall, there was an increase in the proportion of users in mobile and fixed-line phones, while the figure for mobile phones rose dramatically to surpass that of fixed-line, making it the most subscribed service from 2001 onwards.
During the first 7 years of the period, mobile phone subscriptions were consistently higher than that of fixed-line. The percentage of subscribers to mobile phones started at 1.7% in 1994, after which it saw a steady increase to nearly 3% by 2001. Similarly, the figure for fixed-line phones was at 0.06% in the beginning, followed by a gradual growth to 1% in 5 years later, before rising significantly to exactly 3% by the end.
In the remaining years of the period, the proportion of people subscribed to fixed-line phones exceeded that of mobile phones and recorded a much more considerable gap. The share of people using mobile phones experienced a slow increase to 3.1% by 2004, while the figure for fixed-line phones was almost three times as much as that of mobile phones by the end of the period.
