A new Speedchecker report, showcasing the best mobile networks in Africa, has ranked South Africa second, behind Morocco, in its fastest mobile network category and fifth among networks with the best coverage.

The report, Africa’s Mobile Network Champions, reviewed about 3.44-million speed test samples, with data collected from end-user devices running Android and iOS systems, from January 2021 to January 2022.

The report selects champions in two categories, namely fastest mobile network and best mobile coverage, as well as the mobile network champion in each country.

South Africa, with MTN named the mobile network champion, secured second place, out of 46 countries, for the “fastest mobile champions”, with an average country download speed of 19.20 Mb/s determined from 62 294 samples.

Morocco ranked number one, with an average country download speed of 23.57 Mb/s from 147 819 samples. Maroc Telecom was named the mobile network champion in that category.

Tunisia, at 18.19 Mb/s from 59 133 samples, and Mali, at 15.76 Mb/s from 55 509 samples, were ranked third and fourth respectively, with Tunisie Telecom and Orange as the best mobile champions, while Malawi secured fifth place, with an average country download speed of 13.71 Mb/s from 36 443 samples.

Algeria, Burundi, Libya, Mauritania and the Central African Republic (CAR) ranked lowest in the study, with rankings of 42, 43, 44, 45 and 46 respectively.

Algeria and Burundi had average country download speeds of 5.34 Mb/s and 5.10 Mb/s from 430 861 and 13 822 samples respectively, while Libya and Mauritania had average country download speeds of 4.28 Mb/s and 4.23 Mb/s from 98 808 and 32 426 samples respectively.

The CAR had an average country download speed of 3.97 Mb/s from 4 816 samples collected during the period under review.

For the fastest mobile network category, the study excludes South Sudan, Swaziland, Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Sao Tome and Principe and Comoros, as the team did not collect enough samples from the smaller-population countries to get to a sufficient accuracy level.

In the best coverage champions category, South Africa dropped to a ranking of five out of the 54 countries surveyed.

South Africa had a country coverage score of 816 from 112.86-million samples. Vodacom was named the mobile network champion in this category.

The top four countries in Africa with the best coverage included Mauritius, Comoros, Seychelles and Egypt.

Mauritius secured a country coverage score of 928 from 3.89-million samples, while Comoros, Seychelles and Egypt received scores of 887, 848 and 844 from 539 472, 304 166 and 79.96-million samples respectively.

Those ranked within the least covered were Niger, Ethiopia, Mauritania, the CAR and Eritrea.

Niger received a score of 403 from 9.17-million samples, while Ethiopia had a score of 402 from 13.18-million samples.

Mauritania, the CAR and Eritrea had scores of 361, 347 and 315 from 1.31-million, 148 314 and 23 580 samples.

Speedchecker developed a robust and reliable methodology of assessing cellular coverage worldwide, with a data-driven approach using billions of cellular measurements conducted by hundreds of millions of mobile devices.

The company’s data analysis process for mobile coverage involves four primary steps, namely collection, filtering, spatial aggregation and summarisation, the results of which are used to determine the coverage score on a country and operator level.