Tanzania update: Lucky seven or lucky eight?

Tigo Tanzania - one of seven or one of eight cellcos on the market?
photo from the Daily Nation (Kenya)

A little while ago, I wrote a piece here about the mobile market in one East African country whose title included the phrase 'lucky seven'. The point of that was to ask whether what I took to be that country's seventh cellco - a CDMA network operator using the brand name Sasatel - would be able to make much of an impact.

A anonymous DevelopingTelecomsWatch reader has pointed out that in fact that country, Tanzania, was already home to seven licensed mobile operators prior to the maket debut of new-kid-in-town Sasatel. As the helpful reader pointed out, HiTS Telecom already appears to have a presence in the country, asserting that the company launched GSM services in the Dar es Salaam region last month and is building out its nationwide network over the next two years.

I must be getting old. How did I forget to mention the HiTS Telecom Tanzania operation? Not only have I exchanged correspondence with someone who works for that operation, but I also (briefly) met one of their people at a conference in Nairobi earlier this year. A definite senior moment, then, for DTW.

That said, the HiTS Telecom launch last month does seem to have gone ahead with relatively little fanfare and also seems to have been somewhat behind schedule - in June last year, the group's CEO spoke to CommsMEA and indicated that operations would begin in late 2008. Around the same time, according to the Citizen newspaper, Excellentcom Ltd (which trades as HiTS Tanzania), signed a USD 180 million contract with Chinese telecoms solutions vendor Huawei, whereby the latter would start "building Excellentcom's network to enable it to cover the whole country within 13 months." If the work was meant to start immediately, then HiTS Tanzania would have national coverage around now rather than in the two years from now mentioned by our anonymous reader.

HiTS Telecom clearly has a presence in Tanzania, then, and while perhaps I can't be forgiven for neglecting to mention that in an article profiling the country's mobile market, you can possibly see why I remain a bit unsure of the status of the operation. That said, I definitely should have used the term 'lucky eight' in the title of the article rather than 'lucky seven', though perhaps the former would only make sense for Chinese readers of DTW.

Again, input from readers who really know the Tanzanian scene would be gratefully received.

In other Tanzanian news, the country's oldest and largest fixed-line operator, TTCL, whose CDMA cellular service has a small and dwindling share of the mobile market, is set to be affected by the withdrawal of the Canadian company which signed a three-year deal to oversee the incumbent telcos operations in 2007, according to a TeleGeography article on Monday.

It seems that SaskTel International's three-year management contract covering the operation, maintenance and expansion of the incumbent’s network to improve its financial, commercial and technical performance was meant to run until July 2010. The TeleGeography article states that the Candian company's departure "raises fresh questions over why a series of privatisation plans for TTCL have derailed."

The article goes on to say that SaskTel has reportedly submitted a 45-day notice (ends 12 July) notifying its intention to pull out of the deal citing its inability to raise the funding necessary to transform the operator’s fortunes. It seems that SaskTel has failed to secure government guarantees for a USD 1.5 million loan for TTCL, needed for various projects.

Hopefully the above improves upon my (clearly imperfect) previous Tanzania round-up for any readers interested in the telecoms scene of that country.

Be lucky.

Tanzania update: Lucky seven or lucky eight?

How many cellcos does it take to deliver quality, choice and value? It depends where you ask...

A number of recent blog posts here at DTW have chewed over the issue of how many mobile operators is the optimum number for a given market. That has usually been 'optimum' in the sense of a number conducive to a level of competition which allows all players to turn a decent profit. It occurs to me now that I've spent less time thinking about the optimum number of MNOs in terms of making up a competitive environment which delivers choice, value and quality to subscribers.

This last point seems to be on the minds of Nepal's new Minister for Information and Communications, Shankar Pokharel, according to a report from Cellular News yesterday.

The Minister has warned the country's two cellcos that the Government might consider licensing a third mobile operator if they do not improve their quality of service. This is despite the fact that the current operators have a guarantee that no new networks will enter the market until September 2010 at the earliest.

This is not the first time this year that the county's MNOs have faced criticism and intervention.

In March, according to the Global Mobile Daily service from Informa Telecoms & Media, the country's telecoms regulator was pressuring operators to lower interconnection rates, the telcos having failed to reduce rates when asked to do so in February. The feeling would seem to be, then, that high prices have been keeping services beyond the reach of much of the population of a country whose economic development is hampered by a number of factors - the country's isolation from the world's major land, air and sea transport routes; hilly and mountainous terrain making the building of roads and other infrastructure difficult and expensive, which means volume distribution of goods is very challenging; a relative lack of tangible natural resources and the importance of agriculture in the economy meaning that over 75% of the workforce is employed in low-paying farm work; around half the working-age population being unemployed or underemployed. Mobile penetration, according to WCIS, currently stands at just 18.23%.

One of the two incumbent mobile operators, Mero Mobile, appeared to be responsive to concerns about prohibitively high tariffs by late March, when it announced substantial cuts to prepaid prices, according to GMD. Mero Mobile is now part of TeliaSonera's Eurasia business unit, the giant Scandinavian telco having acquired a controlling interest last year.

The growth-inhibiting factors described above make for a challenging market for Mero Mobile and its rival in the cellular space, Nepal Telecom, which is also the county's incumbent fixed-line operator. Of these factors, the rugged physical geography of the country presents a number of problems. This is clear from the fact, as reported in yesterday's Cellular News article, that the TeliaSonera-controlled MNO has announced that it will invest USD 120 million in 2009 and USD 130 in 2010 on boosting its network coverage, with some of the investment to go on increasing back-up power supplies to cope with the unreliable national power grid. Nepal Telecom has apparently also recently announced plans to boost its own back-up generators and switch to renewable power supplies where possible due to the same reliability issues.

The nature of the terrain also necessitates the use of satellite communications for cellular backhaul, as demonstrated by the incumbent telco selecting Gilat Satellite Networks earlier this year to ensure coverage in rural communities.

It remains to be seen if the new Nepali IT/telecoms Minister will open the market to a third operator and, if he does, how much enthusiasm this market arouses among strategic investors. Clearly, Nepal is an under-penetrated territory and, with a population of nearly 30 million, could represent a decent-sized opportunity. A new entrant, however, will need to be mindful of the challenges presented by the country's under-developed economy and infrastructure.

From a market in which the government is keen to add another MNO into the mix, we now turn our attention to one where this is decidedly not the case.

According to a TeleGeography article yesterday, the Information & Communication Technology Agency (ITCA) of Mauritius is of the opinion that four MNOs would be to many for the island nation of around 1.3 million souls.

Three cellcos currently compete there. Orange is the clear market leader with an estimated 57.50% share of mobile subscriptions. Next comes Emtel, a company in which Millicom International Cellular has a stake and which claims to have been the first mobile telephony operation in the whole southern hemisphere in 1989.

A much smaller player, founded in 2003, is Mahanagar Telephone Mauritius, a subsidiary of Indian state-owned telco MTNL. This company, which also provides broadband and fixed-wireless telephony services, has just an estimated 2.67% of the country's mobile subs on its CDMA network - Orange and Emitel operate GSM and 3G W-CDMA networks.

The company hoping to join these MNOs to compete in a mobile market with a 83.55% penetration rate is Outremer Telecom, an operator with a presence in the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique and Reunion. According to yesterday's TeleGeography piece, this company has been dealt a blow to its plans to extend its footprint to Mauritius, with the ICTA declining its application for a mobile licence. Outremer Telecom says it plans to appeal the decision to the ICT Appeal Tribunal.

The ICTA told the company it had decided not to issue a fourth mobile operating licence, citing the global economic downturn and the need to protect the investment plans of incumbent operators as the reason. ICTA is understood to have received official complaints from Orange and Emtel.

Presumably, ICTA believes that the current line-up of operator delivers quality and value to the mobile consumer of Mauritius.

How many cellcos does it take to deliver quality, choice and value? It depends where you ask...

Vodafone to brave India's 'Internet graveyard'?

Thanks to Indian digital and media business watchers Medianama, I learned today that Vodafone Essar has gained the approval of India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) for setting up as an ISP. The intention to do this, and to gain a National Long Distance Licence was reported by the Press Trust of India last month.

Medianama believe that while wanting an NLD license is understandable, the interest in an ISP licence is "intriguing." Their article wonders about the logic of this "when the last mile is still not open" and with "other telcos like Airtel and Reliance struggling to add wireline and broadband subscribers." The Medianama writer goes as far as describing India as an "ISP graveyard" with just 6.28 million Internet users in the country as of April 2009.

These figures are in line with the ones quoted by Australian telecoms industry research house BuddeComm, the synopsis of whose India Broadband Market report notes that by early 2009, "there were around 6 million broadband subscribers – a lowly penetration (by population) of less than 0.6%."

The Medianama article suggests possible reasons for Vodafone being optimistic about its prospective entry into the ISP market. One could be the cellco possibly planning to bid for a Broadband Wireless Access licence.

BuddeComm analysts, however, do not seem terribly excited by the country's BWA scene either, noting that "by early 2009, the number of WiMAX subscribers remained modest." On the other hand, some are more bullish regarding WiMAX. The organisers of a WiMAX-themed conference taking place next month in New Delhi, for example, believe that India is slated to become the largest WiMAX market in the Asia-Pacific region by 2013, citing an (unnamed) recent study which predicts India's WiMAX subscriber base hitting 14 million four years from now. The conference blurb says that "WiMAX will find relatively greater utility and less competition from competing technologies in smaller towns and villages" and that all of this "means that in the next four years about 20 per cent of the global WiMAX users will be in India", making it a USD 13 billion market.

Another reason suggested by Medianama for Vodafone being keen on an ISP play is some expectation that India's last mile will be opened up soon. The article notes that public sector telcos BSNL and MTNL are the country's largest ISPs due to their legacy ownership of copper to the home. I am not clear on when this status quo is set to be challenged. Without having watched the issue very closely, I recall that past calls for local loop unbundling in India have gone unheeded by the Government. The regulatory-best-practice-fanboy in me feels that this is misguided and that the better way forward is to enable anyone with the will to do so to set up an ISP. Not all of them would succeed, but the winners would offer lower priced services to a broadband-hungry population.

Perhaps, though, by not forcing the telcos it owns (BSNL, MTNL) to offer cost-based access to its infrastructure, the Indian Government feels it is protecting the interests of these two valuable state holdings. Another way of looking at it is to suggest that failing to unbundle the local loop has simply cut off a revenue stream in the form of the access fees.

Vodafone, then, seems to be heading into a potentially challenging space if it intends to make a serious go as an ISP in India. Let's keep watching.

Vodafone to brave India's 'Internet graveyard'?

Double A Side: Zain Africa Speculation Watch: Episode 8 + Iran 3rd Mobile Licence Saga Update

Vivendi's Lévy: no comment on Zain Africa rumours
Picture: ⓒ 2008 The IBTimes Company

Intrepid reporters from Reuters can often be relied upon to grab telecoms big hitters on the sidelines of conferences and other events. Reuters people seem to be well trained in the dark art of thrusting a mic at the luminaries and bagging a headline-worthy quote.

Last month, for example, the ambitions of Russian cellco MTS were revealed to a Reuters scribe on the sidelines of the of the St Petersburg Economic Forum.

This week, however, the news service has done quite so well. A Reuters reporter sprang on Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman of French media and telecoms conglomerate Vivendi, who was present yesterday at a forum in Aix-en-Provence, France. Regular readers of this blog, particularly those gripped by the drama of Zain Africa Speculation Watch the mini-series should be able to guess which question was asked. The answer? Not too illuminating.

Levy declined on Saturday to say whether his company is interested in acquiring the African operations of Kuwaiti telecoms group Zain. "I have no comment to make on this," was Lévy's reply.

So we are none the wiser - unless you're the kind of conspiracy theorist who infers something significant from such a minimal response.

I was one of those for whom the notion of Zain selling its African operations popped up out of nowhere. I remembered colleagues returning from a pan-African telecoms sector conference and reporting that Chris Gabriel, CEO of Zain's African unit had spoken in terms of having a war chest for further acquisitions. Much had also been made of Zain's stated ambition of being a major global player and of the strategic important of Africa in that context.

Zain Africa Speculation Watch kicked off on on 12th June, almost as soon as I had started to hear rumours. Another reason this was all rather surprising was that only days before that, there had been suggestions that Zain might be looking to acquire a significant asset on the African continent -France Telecom's stake in market-leading Egyptian cellco Mobinil. Readers interested in that part of the world cannot have failed to notice the long wrangle that has gone on between France Telecom and the other major shareholder in Mobinil, Orascom Telecom, itself a Cairo-headquartered company.

This tussle seems to have been initiated when the two sides found themselves at variance over strategy for Mobinil. According to Alastair Sharp, the Egyptians were keen to invest more heavily than the French wished to, disagreeing over Mobinil's budget and expenditure, marketing strategy and start up of 3G services. Since kicking off in April, this has become quite a heated business, with famously outspoken Orascom Telecom Chairman Naguib Sawiris accusing France Telecom of being "in the business of value destruction".

Sneaking onto the end of today's musings - by virtue of being Zain-related - is the matter of Iran's third national mobile licence. In common with Zain Africa Speculation Watch and the Sawiris-France Telecom battle, this is another fairly long-running story to which it is probably not unfair to apply the label 'saga'.

The saga started with the UAE's Etisalat and local partners winning the valuable Iranian concession, which comes with a useful period of exlusivity regarding the provision of 3G services. This later went sour and by mid-May, I was noting here that Zain appeared to be waiting in the wings to pick up the licence and get into the large, growing and still helpfully under-penetrated Iranian mobile market.

This is now looking unlikely.

On Friday, TeleGeography was picking up reports from an Iranian newspaper which indicated that a new tender will be held to find a strategic investor to launch the country’s third national mobile network. Iran’s telecoms minister Mohammad Soleimani was quoted as saying that Zain had been offered the third operating licence in May, but had "not fulfilled obligations".

A Cellular News take on the same story talks in terms of confusion about whether Zain had not only been "offered" this licence but had also actually secured it, mentioning reports from mid-May about the Kuwaiti company having been "awarded" the concession.

The article continues, however, by noting that Zain said it had only been invited to renew its negotiations as the leader of the consortium that came second in the original bid process. As the article states, "if Zain was formally awarded the license, then it has kept very quiet about it."

For seasoned Iran watchers, this is all a bit déjà vu. As the Cellular News piece reminds us, there was also controversy over the country's second national mobile licence. This had been snapped up by a company 51% owned by Turkcell in 2004, but the deal fell foul of a clamp down on foreign investments by conservative forces in Iran. The Turkish cellco was accused of having links with Israel - clearly a complete no-no. After a year of wrangling, the licence was reissued to South Africa's MTN, which was happy with a minority stake in the new operator.

Two sagas, then, that I enjoying watching. Happily, a little news about both was breaking at around the same time. Hence this Double A Side update from DTW.

Double A Side? Use of that term betrays the fact that I'm old enough to have been brought up on vinyl. Having turned over a chunk of Sunday to writing this, perhaps I'll slap something mellow on the turntable and just leave the sagas to one side for now.

Double A Side: Zain Africa Speculation Watch: Episode 8 + Iran 3rd Mobile Licence Saga Update

Somalia: while daring operators turn a profit, it's the bad news that tends to reach us

Somalia - often in the news, but, sadly, this rarely seems to be for positive reasons.

Just this week, heavy fighting in Mogadishu has caused at least twenty deaths, with fierce clashes between Government forces and an Al-Qaeda-linked rebel group battling to oust the country's President. Meanwhile, Minority Rights Group International (an organisation which campaigns worldwide to protect disadvantaged minorities and indigenous peoples) has stated that Somalia remains the world's most dangerous country for minority groups.

Amidst the chaos of the civil war which has gripped the country since 1991, Somalia has sometimes gained strong praise for the surprisingly good condition of its telecommunications infrastructure. For example, Industry-watcher Paul Budde, with whom I once had the pleasure of working to create an Oceania region telecoms sector conference in Sydney, wrote in 2005 that although Somalia had "no government" and was "lawless and war-torn" with "no banking system, no national telecoms operator, no court system" and with nobody paying taxes, the country nevertheless had a thriving telecoms business.

Paul wrote about how when national operator Telecom Somalia collapsed, their employees continued to work, setting up a de facto privatised company in 1994. Paul also described his amazement at learning about how this entity and two other mobile operators later voluntarily agreed to introduce operational separation and combined to set up a separate infrastructure to be used by all three of them. He also wrote about how despite the lack of a banking and court system people pay their bills, "and even the war lords don’t interfere as they all have a vested interest in good telecoms." Paul was also surprised at broadband speeds available in the Mogadishu area and the speed with which customers could have a landline installed.

Three years later, an African Press Agency report also described telecommunications as one of the rare business successes in the strife-torn country. This report asserted that it is easier to set up a telecoms business in Somalia than in some other African countries because there is no need to get a license and there is no state-run monopoly hindering new competitors from entering the market.

As things currently stands, the mobile market is, according to the World Cellular Information Service from Informa Telecoms & Media, contested by no less than six telecoms operators, all of which have deployed GSM networks. These are (in order of estimated market share):

1. Telecom Somalia - 37.87%
2. Hormuud Telecom Somalia - 18.74%
3. Telsom - 13.71%
4. Somafone - 13.27%
5. NationLink Telecom - 9.90%
6. Golis Telecom Somalia - 6.52%
   

My understanding is that because of the way de facto control of the country is fragmented, these operators do not all cover precisely the same areas. As a nation state, Somalia exists largely in a de jure capacity. A weak but largely recognised central government authority, the Transitional Federal Government is just the latest in a series of ineffectual, externally recognized governing authorities. In reality, control of the north of the country resides in the regional authorities. Of these, Puntland, Northland State, Maakhir, Galmudug, acknowledge the authority of the TFG and maintain their declaration of autonomy within a federated Somalia, while Central, Southern Somalia and Kismayo are in the control of the Islamic Courts Union and insurgent group al-Shabab. Baidoa is currently the seat of the TFG, and Somalia's commercial centre. On the other hand, the Somaliland region in the north, with its capital in Hargeisa, has declared independence and does not recognise the TFG as governing authority. Its self-declared independence is unrecognised internationally due in part to opposition from the TFG and other countries, such as neighbouring Ethiopia, which fear ensuing secessionist movements.

This fragmentation of the country is reflected in the coverage areas of the operators, most of which offer a range of fixed-line services in addition to their mobility propositions. Golis Telecom Somalia, for example, operates in North East Somalia, offering fixed and mobile services in both Puntland and the self-declared independent state of Somaliland. Hormuud Telecom Somalia, meanwhile, describes itself as the leading telecommunication services provider in Southern Somalia.

Strikingly absent from the list of six cellcos/telcos above are any big names. No multinational telecoms group has the stomach for operating in an unregulated free-for-all and in a country whose security situation continues to be so parlous. I daresay this will not change for as long as Somalia continues to be wracked with conflict and continues to suffer from the absence of settled and fully legitimate government.

So, despite the fact that some daring, entrepreneurial operators are making a profit from providing life-improving services in this troubled country, it seems that for now, even in the context of telecoms sector news, it will largely be bad news that filters through to the outside world.

One recent example of this concerns pirate activity off the Somali coast delaying installation for SEACOM, one of three undersea cables set to deliver vast improvements to the capacity of East Africa's telecoms and Internet infrastructure. Anything which delays these improvements coming on line is highly regrettable because, as a recent Reuters report points out, while the three subsea cables and many on-land infrastructure projects are helping to boost communications, sub-Saharan Africa continues to be hampered by excessive prices for broadband and mobile services. The report features comments from Mohsen Khalil, World Bank Group Director for Global ICT who says that the typical monthly mobile bill was still USD 10-12 in Africa, while in Southeast Asia many operators run profitable operations with average bills of USD5 or less.

Another incident whose impact will be felt much less widely, but is nonetheless extremely horrible, took place in an area controlled by the insurgent group al-Shabab. According to a recent Cellular News report, a court under the control of al-Shabab has ordered four young men suspected of stealing guns and mobile phones each to have a hand and a leg amputated.

Because of the mobile handset angle, this pops up as a Somalia-related item for various telecoms sector news sources. Regrettably, it feels like stories of this kind continue to outnumber more positive items. Communications services undoubtedly improve lives in developing countries, but the good work of people in our sector will continue to be hampered anywhere where ongoing conflict prevents the establishment of the legitimate and internationally recognised rule of law.

Somalia: while daring operators turn a profit, it's the bad news that tends to reach us

Mobile applications used to alleviate poverty in Africa and Asia

Earlier this week, global not-for-profit organisation the Grameen Foundation announced the launch of a suite of mobile applications developed with Google and cellco MTN Uganda. The applications deliver highly useful services and information that were not previously available to Uganda’s poor and disadvantaged communities.

The Grameen Foundation's role is to help the world's poorest people to gain access to financial services and technology solutions through the provision of financing, management strategies and technology to the local organisations that serve them. The Foundation also spearheads technology initiatives that create new microbusiness opportunities for the poor, provide telecommunications access for the world's rural poor, and improve their access to health and agriculture information and other services.

I learned of the launch via the Kiwanja.net blog maintained by Ken Banks, the founder of FrontlineSMS, a free large-scale messaging solution for NGOs and non-profit organisations working in the developing world. Having had the pleasure of meeting Ken once (albeit too briefly) and having sung his praises more than once here, it was interesting to learn that he was also involved in the early stages of the Grameen Foundation's Ugandan initiative, spending a month on the ground studying a mixture of geography, culture, challenges, data availability and technologies in and around Kampala.

If, like me, you find Ken's work - and the work of the many, many organisations now using FrontlineSMS - to be fascinating and inspiring, I'd encourage you to read his review of an exciting twelve months since the release of the application's most recent version in June 2008.

I can also suggest an interesting read for those of you who like a dash of Hollywood glamour with your telecoms news and your accounts of how mobile technology improves lives in developing countries. This comes in the form of a press release from the University of Canberra (Australia), whose researchers are working with the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, an organisation founded by tabloid favourites Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The researchers are trialling a deployment of FrontLine SMS for Cambodian farmers which is aimed at helping to improve the lives of some of the poorest people in the country. The system can be used to alert villagers about disease outbreaks, and to provide other important health and agricultural information. An example of the latter is helping farmers access the price of maize or soybeans on demand, so they are in a stronger position to negotiate the sale of their crop.

Back in Uganda, meanwhile, the suite of five mobile services announced this week are provided using Google SMS Search technology and the MTN network. They are:

• Farmer’s Friend - a searchable database with both agricultural advice and targeted weather forecasts
• Health Tips - which provides sexual and reproductive health information
• Clinic Finder - which helps locate nearby health clinics and their services
• Google Trader, which matches buyers and sellers of agricultural produce and commodities as well as other products

Uganda, where mobile market penetration stands at 33.63% (as of June 2009) according to WCIS, has yet to see the deployment of 3G mobile broadband networks, and is also a market in which the majority of handsets in circulation are presumably more basic models. With this in mind, then, these services are SMS-based and designed to work with low-end devices, thereby reaching the broadest possible audience.

Despite the mobile market growing strongly in Uganda, the low penetration rate (vs. a world average of 63.05%) is evidence that SIM cards and handsets remain beyond the reach of many in terms of affordability.

This need not mean, however, that services of this kind - or indeed access to basic mobile voice - cannot be accessed by those not able to buy a phone of their own. Uganda is, after all, one of the countries most strongly associated with the the Village Phone concept, which involves prospective subscribers taking small loans to purchase a phone and SIM card. These users then provide services to their neighbours in rural areas, for which a fee is charged. This way, a Village Phone entrepreneur repays the original loan and then has an ongoing, sustainable income stream. The entrepreneur's customers, meanwhile, experience an improvement in their own living standards as a result of having access to communications services.

As you might expect, then, the Grameen Foundation's press release this week makes it clear that the new SMS-based services can be accessed by existing Village Phone Operators, thereby leveraging an established means of connecting the poorest people with useful services.

Much of what I have read and heard about life-improving services in developing countries has stressed that the telecoms operators, at least, do not regard their involvement in projects like this as an act of charity. On the contrary, the oft-articulated argument is that this is good business - if these services boost the productivity of rural people and assist in lifting them out of extreme poverty, this creates a prospective new customer segment for MNOs where none previously existed. This spirit is evident in comments made by Noel Meier, CEO of MTN Uganda, who said that his company "hoping to reach people in rural and disadvantaged communities while we build up a new line of business for the company."

Having dedicated much time here of late to gossip about M&A activity, it's been good today to look away from the boardrooms and towards the users of the services provided by telcos in developing countries. I remain hopeful that the profit motive can be successfully reconciled with the alleviation of poverty and misery. Stories like the ones recounted today keep that hope alive.

Mobile applications used to alleviate poverty in Africa and Asia

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