Nigeria Ranks 152nd in Worldwide Broadband Speed Report for 2018, Drops 57 Places from 2017

According to the 2018 global ranking report for worldwide broadband speed released by Cable (one of the world’s leading broadband magazines), Nigeria is currently ranked 152nd among the 200 countries tested.

The rankings are based on about 163 million broadband speed tests conducted in 200 countries over a 12-month period (10th May 2017 – 29th May 2018). It examined the mean average download speed of these countries by taking note of how long it would take to download a 5GB HD movie, and thus placed them on a league based on the results.

https://t.co/K8OJccUIru's worldwide broadband speed league 2018 https://t.co/nzshDbJ7az

— Cable.co.uk (@CableUK) July 10, 2018

Nigeria’s Ranking

The rankings placed Nigeria on the 152nd position for 2018 dropping a significant figure of 57 places from its previous position of 95th in the 2017 report. With an average download speed of 1.86Mbps, it took an average of 6 hours, 7 minutes and 38 seconds to complete the download of the 5GB file–which is a massive decline when compared to the 3.15Mbps recorded in the 2017’s report. At such poor speed, Nigeria lags behind 13 other African countries, out of the 38 African countries listed.

Madagascar's broadband speed is the fastest in Africa, and ahead of UK, South Korea, and Canada. An analysis of more than 160m broadband speed tests conducted across 200 countries revealed Singapore as the world’s fastest country. Of the lowest ranked 10 countries, 7 are African. pic.twitter.com/30ExbCHqJz

— Botho Emerging Markets Group (@BothoGroup) July 11, 2018

These African Countries include Madagascar – 22nd position, Kenya – 64th position, South Africa -76th position, Cape Verde – 115th position, Ghana – 120th position, Zimbabwe – 121st position, Rwanda – 130th position, Namibia – 131st position, Burundi – 134th position, Mauritius – 139th position, Uganda – 140th position, Zambia – 146th position, and Tanzania – 149th position

Worthy of note is the top 5 ranked countries are Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Romania, while Guinea, Somalia, Turkmenistan, East Timor and Yemen ranks the lowest. Countries like the US, France, Germany and the UK comes in the 20th, 23rd, 25th, and 35th positions respectively.

Why is the Continent’s Ranking Low?

With a large landmass, population and the slow acceptance of a digital economy, Africa lags a long way behind, the rest of the world in terms of broadband penetration and speed. The success of the highest ranked African country, Madagascar (22nd) with an average speed of 24.87Mbps is as a result of its underwater cables that supply the island with respectable fibre broadband speeds.

This is not the case for many other African countries as they still depend on Wireless (WiMAX, 3G, 4G) connectivities rather than broadband cables to cover their vast area and population.

When it comes to internet provision, the situation varies both by country and region. Generally speaking though, you can apply the rule that the larger and less developed the nation is, the slower the internet access tends to be. For example, the economy of Chad suffers from geographical remoteness, drought and political turmoil, with agriculture its chief industry. It is also vast. There is therefore arguably no pressing economic necessity for high-speed internet, while the difficulty of delivering it would almost certainly exceed Chad’s GDP. – Cable

It would ensure regionalised players are able to deliver more infrastructure and services.

The knock-on effect would be more people coming online, faster speed and more broadband driven services across Nigeria.

Additional, it would see broadband cost drop over time.

— afrispheric (@afrispheric) July 12, 2018

While there has been some development in terms of the rollout and uptake of the latest technology in some countries like Nigeria and Kenya, more still needs to be done regarding infrastructure to bolster broadband penetration and speed.

The research was conducted by M-Lab, a partnership between New America’s Open Technology Institute, Google Open Source Research, Princeton University’s PlanetLab, and other supporting partners. It was compiled by Cable. You can click here for full details.