The growing reliance on digital technologies and the internet has driven up the value of ICT consumption in the country to a high of Sh608.1 billion in 2022.
This is up from an output value of Sh564.8 billion that was recorded in the previous year, latest official data indicates.
In general, the sector recorded a growth of 9.9 percent in 2022 according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) Economic Survey 2023.
The report released on Wednesday, details how various sectors and jobs market performed in the past year.
The survey attributes the rapid uptake of technology to the Covid-19 pandemic, that continued to accelerate digital connectivity last year as the markets sought alternative means of procuring goods and services.
Industry data compiled by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) indicates that the value of intermediate consumption increased from Sh273.4 billion in 2021, to Sh289.8 billion in 2022.
“The difference between the ICT sector gross output and intermediate consumption (the ICT value added) also increased by 9.2 per cent from Sh291.4 billion in 2021 to Sh318.3 billion in 2022,” said KNBS director general Macdonald Obudho.
Mobile phone subscriptions
Despite the boom in internet usage uptake, mobile subscriptions registered a slowed growth in the period under review to 65.7 million compared to 65.1 million in 2021.
The fixed telephony capacity also remained constant whereas fixed connections have consistently declined culminating in a 19.2 per cent reduction to 11,963 in 2022.
This trend is mainly attributed to the continuous adoption of mobile technology, as many people continue abandoning fixed telephony in preference of mobile services.
However, the number of mobile money transfer agents and transactions continued to record steady growth over the past five years.
In 2022, the number of mobile money subscribers rose by 9.7 per cent to reach 38.6 million, while the value of mobile money transferred increased by 15.1 per cent to Sh7.9 trillion.
The value of mobile commerce transactions grew by 32.7 per cent from Sh15.3 trillion in 2021, to Sh20.3 trillion in 2022.
The domestic call traffic declined from 80.1 billion minutes in 2021 to 78.3 billion minutes in 2022, while international calls grew from 1 billion minutes in 2021 to 1.1 billion minutes in 2022.
Increasing international calls trend has been attributed to affordable and comprehensive roaming packages offered by operators and increased global engagement in trade, tourism and international relations.
Internet infrastructure
In 2022 the available bandwidth capacity improved by 9.9 per cent to 12.0 million Mbps.
Fixed broadband also exhibited growth, with total subscriptions rising by 24.5 per cent to 837,990.
A key driver of this growth was the 38.0 per cent increase in Fibre to the Home (FttH) subscriptions to 566,901 in 2022, accounting for 67.7 per cent of total fixed broadband subscriptions.
This has led service providers to focus on expanding network infrastructure, transitioning from voice to data services and launching of rural tower expansion, 5G networks and expansion of fibre rollouts.
In the review period, the number of licensed Application Service Providers (ASPs) in Kenya increased to 471 in from 420 in 2021.
Content Services Providers (CSPs) increased by 14.0 per cent to 682 from 598 owing to the expansion of the digital content market.