Today state owned telecoms are virtually absent with private operators rubbing in to control the mobile phone sector.

At the end of March 2017, the total subscriptions of mobile data in the country was 21,419,477 with a penetration rate of 75.78%.

Across the rest of the continent the trends are similar: between 2000 and 2010, Kenyan mobile phone firm Safaricom saw its subscriber base increase in excess of 500-fold. In 2010 alone the number of mobile phone users in Rwanda grew by 50%, figures from the country’s regulatory agency show.

During the early years of mobile in Africa, the Short Messaging Service (SMS) was at the heart of the revolution. Today the next frontier for mobile use in Africa is the internet.

Below are seven ways that mobile phones have transformed the country.

From Pulse. Story by Desmond Frimpong.

Banking

Mobile money transfer service operated by several networks in Ghana has eased payment systems in Ghana. In 2016 there were 16.6 million mobile money customers

The total value of mobile money transactions by users of the service at the end of September this year reached GH¢109 billion cedis. This represents a 112 percent growth over the GH¢51.4 billion cedis recorded from January to September in 2016.

Many Ghanaians now use mobile money to pay their bills and airtime, buy goods and make payments to individuals, remittances from relatives living abroad are also largely done via mobile banking.

Read more at Pulse.