Understanding the Impact of OTT Apps/Services

Welcome to your course on Understanding the Impact of OTT Apps and Services!

This course is designed for telecommunications regulators, ICT ministry officials, and senior policymakers who must respond to the rise of over-the-top (OTT) services across Africa. Most OTT policies fail not because regulators acted too slowly, but because they reached for the wrong instrument: a blanket tax, a ban, or a legacy telecom licence forced onto a service that works nothing like a phone call. An evidence-based approach flips that around. It starts from how OTT services actually behave, weighs consumer benefit against operator sustainability, and learns from what African experiments have already shown works and what backfires.

The curriculum opens with the OTT landscape in Africa, the service categories and the scale of adoption reshaping the continent's digital economy, then examines the economic impact on telecom operators, from revenue displacement to net neutrality. You will then compare the regulatory frameworks countries have tried, grounded in the real evidence from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Cameroon, before turning to the principles of smart OTT policy aligned with the African Union Digital Transformation Strategy 2020-2030.

By mastering these concepts, you will be equipped to weigh the trade-offs OTT regulation involves, draw on African evidence rather than assumption, and recommend a balanced, proportionate OTT policy suited to your own country's market conditions and digital inclusion goals.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Identify the main OTT service categories and explain how they have spread across African markets.
• Analyse the economic impact of OTT substitution on African telecom operators, including effects on voice, SMS, and data revenues.
• Compare the regulatory frameworks applied to OTT services, from light-touch registration to full telco-parity licensing.
• Evaluate the evidence from African OTT regulatory experiments and draw lessons from both successes and failures.
• Recommend a balanced OTT policy approach aligned with the African Union Digital Transformation Strategy and suited to your own context.

Who is this course for?

This course is designed for telecommunications regulators, ICT ministry officials, and senior policymakers across Africa. It is highly beneficial for individuals who are:

• Responsible for drafting or reviewing national ICT or telecommunications policy.
• Working on digital economy strategy or the African Union Digital Transformation Strategy 2020-2030.
• Seeking to balance consumer benefit, operator sustainability, and digital inclusion in OTT regulation.