World Bank laments Djibouti’s telecoms monopoly for high cost of services

A study published by the World Bank, and backed by a number of other leading institutions and development agencies, has lambasted Djibouti for failing to liberalise the country’s telecoms market, to the detriment of service quality and access costs there. Djibouti Telecom still holds a monopoly on the national and international market which, in the World Bank’s opinion, is ‘a serious handicap to competition in the sector’.

The Bank cites by way of example the fact that the cost of a basic 1Mbps ADSL service currently costs USD36 per month, or around half the average Djiboutian annual salary, compared to just 5% in Morocco or 3.5% in Tunisia. As such, high speed internet access is prohibitively expensive to all but the richest inhabitants or corporate/international firms.