The Irish Exporters Association today met with a group of information and communications technology and telecoms providers to explore new strategies to exploit the opportunities in African markets. The African market has seen unprecedented growth in the mobile phone market with numbers growing 40-fold from 16.5million since 2000. Today, Africa has more than 650 million mobile phone subscribers - more than the United States or the EU. However, further development is needed, particularly in the area of Internet infrastructure. Although Internet bandwidth has grown 20-fold in the region, the growth is inconsistent with only 3pc of Nigeria currently supplied with broadband for example. Today's meeting heard from Dick Spring, Chairman of Kerry based Altobridge that they are working closely with Intel and Qsat to increase broadband supply and open the African markets for education and commercial products. Bryan Delaney, chairman of the IEA's Africa Trade Council said: "The Internet and mobile phones are transforming the development landscape in Africa, bringing a new dynamism in key sectors including education, financial services, agriculture and retail. The challenge is to scale up technology innovation for economic and social impact across Africa over the next decade and to ensure that Irish technology exporters are at the heart of this."