The line graph illustrates the proportion of people who used two types of telephone, including mobile and fixed-line phones in Africa from 1994 to 2004. Overall, both mobile phone and fixed-line telephone usage experienced an upward trend throughout the period, while the percentage of mobile phone users experienced a dramatic increase throughout the period, the ratio for fixed-line users rose only slightly.
Regarding mobile phones, the percentage of users witnessed a dramatic increase throughout the period.
In particular, it stood at only 0.06% in 1994, the figure remained almost unchanged until around 1998, when it reached roughly 0.5%. After that, the proportion rose sharply, surpassing fixed-line phones at about 2% in 1999. Furthermore, this upward trend continued rapidly, reaching around 6% in 2003 and peaking at 8.8% by 2004, showing that mobile technology quickly became popular across Africa.
In contrast, the proportion of people using fixed-line phones saw only a slow and steady rise. In detail, it started at 1.7% in 1994, climbed gradually to around 2% in 1997, then grew slightly to 2.5% in 2000. In the next five years, the data hovered around 2.8 to 3.1% by 2004. Despite this modest growth, fixed-line phones remained far less common than mobile phones by the end of the period.