Telecom
MEA & Turkey Annual Mobility Spending to Top $185Bn in 2019- IDC
Annual spending on mobility across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) is expected to reach $185 billion by 2019, according to IDC’s new ‘Mobility Spending Guide’.
This represents a 10.2% share of worldwide enterprise and consumer spending on mobile devices, software, and services, which is forecast to total $1.8 trillion in 2019.
Mobility is one of the four pillars that make up IDC\’s 3rd Platform – a series of emerging technologies that have disrupted traditional business processes and continue to create transformative opportunities for vendors eager to engage a wider set of customers.
IDC is closely tracking mobility market developments across regions and has therefore created the new Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide.
This spending guide outlines spending in both the enterprise and consumer segments in great detail across technology categories (mobile devices, software, and services), and across industries, geographies, and industry sizes.
META’s most active countries in this regard are Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa, and the UAE:
Saudi Arabia is the single largest mobility market in META, followed by Turkey. Together, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa, and the UAE accounted for approximately 38.7% of the entire mobility opportunity within the META region in 2015.
However, the rest of the META region is expected to grow at faster compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.1% over the 2014–19 period.
While services accounts for approximately two-thirds of the total mobility opportunity in META, software is the fastest-growing category among the technology categories. Software spending will grow from $164.3 million in 2015 to $330 million in 2019.
Although companies in META lag behind Western Europe in the adoption of mobility, approximately 64% of companies in the region have plans to make modest-to-major investments in business applications for mobile devices (\’IDC Enterprise Communications Survey\’).
Large companies are more active in this respect. In 2015, 49% of mobility software spending in META was attributed to enterprises with over 500 employees, but small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are expected to grow strongly.
Manufacturing, retail, and banking and financial services are among the early adopters of mobility.
While improving productivity, efficiency, and customer services are some of the probable drivers, ensuring security, data privacy, and regulatory compliance remain the key challenges for mobility adoption.
Mobility spending (including hardware, software, and services) by META manufacturing organizations will grow from $5.8 billion in 2015 to $6.5 billion in 2019.
Meanwhile, both the retail and banking & financial services verticals will see increases from approximately $3 billion to $3.8 billion in 2019 over the same period.
‘The META mobility market is generally on the rise,’ said Krishna Chinta, programme manager for telecommunications and media at IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey.
‘However, due to the diversity of the region’s economic conditions, the adoption of mobility is more mature in markets such as the GCC and Turkey, while countries in Africa remain largely underpenetrated.
Africa itself is also a diverse region where countries such as South Africa and Nigeria are more mature than markets such as Ghana and Namibia, which typically remain underdeveloped.
While the low penetration rates across Africa naturally present considerable growth potential for mobility, the ongoing economic diversification measures underway in the GCC will also drive the growth of mobility across the META region. However, the prevailing slump in global crude oil prices might impact the investment propensity of enterprises in the short-to-medium term.\’
IDC’s ‘Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide’ is designed to address the needs of technology organizations by assessing the mobile opportunity by country, industry, and use case.
The spending guide provides subscribers with spending data on 7 technologies across 19 industries, 4 company sizes, and 53 countries.
Unlike any other research in the industry, the comprehensive spending guide can help IT decision makers to clearly understand the industry-specific scope and direction of mobility spending today and over the next five years.
MTN Foundation has been spotlighted as a model for private sector-driven healthcare development in Nigeria, following commendations at the 6th Arthur Mbanefo Lecture held at the University of Lagos, Akoka.
Themed “A Healthy Nation is a Wealthy Nation: The Role of Impact Investments and Sustainable Financing in Nigeria,” the lecture featured Dr. Tolulope Adewole, Managing Director of NSIA Advanced Medical Services Limited (MedServe), as keynote speaker.
Dr. Adewole praised the Foundation’s strategic investments, noting that MTN commits 1% of its profit after tax annually to development sectors. “They’ve invested ₦31.75 billion, reaching over 32 million Nigerians. Though only 25% went to health, it accounted for 51% of all lives impacted. That’s catalytic,” he said.
He cited MTN’s dialysis centre programme as a transformative intervention for patients with kidney disease, and highlighted community-focused initiatives like the Y’ello Doctor mobile scheme and ‘What Can We Do Together’ (WCWDT) programme, which revitalised 164 Primary Healthcare Centres, including 44 in 2024 alone.
Executive Director of MTN Foundation, Odunayo Sanya, reflected on the COVID-19 pandemic’s exposure of systemic health vulnerabilities. “When COVID hit, we realised a health emergency is also an economic and social emergency,” she said.
Sanya revealed that of the 52 PHCs remodeled in 2024, only one had clean water. “I’m not a doctor, but I know you can’t live a good life without clean water,” she added, reaffirming the Foundation’s commitment to bridging healthcare gaps in underserved communities.
Hundreds of university students across Africa are set to benefit from a new gamified learning experience on digital rights and inclusion launched by the leading pan-African non-profit organisation, Paradigm Initiative (PIN).
The Digital Rights and Inclusion Board Learning Experience (DRIBLE) is a game developed by Paradigm Initiative with support from the Open Society Foundations (OSF). The custom-designed board game provides young individuals with a fun and engaging entry point into digital rights and inclusion conversations, training sessions and storytelling tools.
The board game aims to build digital literacy, deepen understanding of online safety, and introduce young individuals to the organisation’s tools of impact. Currently being piloted in three universities: University of Lagos, Nigeria, the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi, Kenya and the Dakar American University of Science and Technology (DAUST) in Dakar, Senegal, it will enhance interactions and create a holistic experience.
Speaking at the event launch at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, ‘Gbenga Sesan, Paradigm Initiative’s Executive Director, said: “PIN’s vision is to reach 20 million people through our Digital Inclusion and Digital Rights interventions. From Lagos, to Dakar, to Nairobi.. we will use the vehicle of our new Digital Rights and Inclusion Board Learning Experience (DRIBLE) which entails using gamification, training, multimedia materials, tools and other interventions to connect African youth with digital opportunities and protect their digital rights.”
‘Gbenga gave the keynote address on “Digital inclusion at PIN, our Past, Present and Future” and Nnenna Paul-Ugochukwu, the organisation’s Chief Operating Officer, said the goal of the learning experience would be instrumental in raising awareness of digital rights among the youth, building their capacity to address digital rights and inclusion issues in their communities. Prof. Olunifesi Adekunle Suraj shared a goodwill message with the students and other stakeholders.
Paradigm Initiative, which has been operational since 2007, started in a tiny cybercafe in Ajegunle, Lagos, Nigeria. Today, the organisation has expanded its wings to cover six African countries; Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe, impacting the livelihoods of over 150,000 young Africans.
The launch of DRIBLE builds on the progress the organisation has made over the years in tackling the challenge of digital exclusion across Africa.
Paradigm Initiative’s tools of impact include Ripoti, a platform that enables individuals to report digital rights violations, Ayeta, a platform that provides digital security resources for stakeholders, more so human rights activists, defenders, journalists and other vulnerable groups, and the organisation’s latest short film, Whispers in the Wires.
Targeted at students, PIN rolled out a Campus Tour in the three universities on the continent starting July 15th, 2025.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has intensified its crackdown on fake accounts and spam, announcing it removed over 10 million fake profiles and roughly 500,000 spam accounts in the first half of 2025.
The sweeping purge is part of Meta’s broader effort to combat impersonation, fake engagement, and content duplication, aiming to elevate authentic creators and improve the quality of content across its platforms.
In a blog post, Meta said: “We’re making progress. In the first half of 2025, we took action on around 500,000 accounts engaged in spammy behaviour or fake engagement. We also removed about 10 million profiles impersonating large content producers.”
Meta stressed that accounts which primarily repost or recycle content without meaningful edits will face penalties such as reduced reach and the loss of monetisation tools.
The company also warned that repeatedly sharing unoriginal content — whether videos, photos, or text — undermines the platform’s integrity by crowding out genuine voices and making it harder for new creators to grow.
To support authentic creators, Meta is rolling out new tools that automatically trace reposted content back to its original source. The company says this will help ensure rightful credit and give higher visibility to original posts.
“Pages and profiles that post mostly original content tend to enjoy wider distribution across Facebook. Simply stitching clips together or adding a watermark will no longer count as meaningful editing. Content that provides real value and tells an authentic story is likely to perform better,” Meta explained.
Creators are also being cautioned against uploading content that includes watermarks from other platforms. Such posts could see their reach restricted or lose monetisation privileges altogether.
As part of its latest update, Meta introduced post-level insights on the Professional Dashboard, allowing creators to monitor how individual posts perform. They can also check their Support Home screen to see if their content or earnings are facing restrictions.
In a parallel development, Google’s YouTube updated its monetisation guidelines, stating that content deemed mass-produced or excessively repetitive will no longer qualify for ad revenue. The announcement initially sparked concern among creators, who feared it was a blanket ban on AI-generated content. YouTube later clarified:
“We welcome creators using AI tools to enhance their storytelling, and channels that use AI in their content remain eligible to monetise.”
Both tech giants say these new policies are aimed at raising content standards and safeguarding genuine creators in a crowded and rapidly evolving digital landscape.
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