Too bad for Gambians
How to rate Africell Gambia? Compare it to competitors in The Gambia? Or versus other mobile phone providers around the world? It feels the latter is more useful because Africell are so behind with what they offer that they need to up their game and as a result improve mobile phone offerings to all Gambians.
The good: it's easy to get a SIM card, as a tourist, to add credit and bundles, and an online app that's ok enough, especially considering how poor everything else is.
The mobile phone providers are terrible in The Gambia, although Comium is coming up. Africell claims to have 5g, but it's an absolute joke. Have a look at the network coverage maps of Africell and other providers. It's abysmal. Some providers claim to provide 5g, but it's literally one tower in one street.
Africell's 5g offering is poor. Firstly, they say 5g but the SIM they give you is not enabled for 5g. You then have to jump through hoops to get a 5g enabled SIM. But then the issues continue. The speed they give you, even if you have a 5g SIM, is dependent on how much you are prepared to pay (!!) and it gets expensive very fast.
So that's the problem, does one dare to pay exorbitant costs just to test if you can get 5g and what speed you can get. If you want 5g it can cost 6000 Dalasis (£60) just to get started. From my initial analysis, i concluded that it wasn't worth the cost nor the risk. What i noticed was that they allocate 99% of their bandwidth/speed to download speed. So if you have anything that needs uploading (like WhatsApp or Teams/Zoom calls) then forget it!
My last complaint (I mean i could keep going, but stopping with top 3), and a BIG one is that you don't get services you pay for and there are unlisted charges. I work remotely and so bought the Senegal (Orange) roaming package. They never mentioned 200d charge until i decided to go ahead. Ok, no big deal, but i needed internet access while i travelled between Gambia to Senegal (Dakkar, and int'l airport).
There were Orange SIMs at the border (advice: take it!!). I decided i don't need to buy as i have paid the hefty price for Africell roaming in Senegal i will stick to that. In the entire journey between two countries the data roaming never worked. I was in Dakar, the data never worked. I lost a LOT of money £££ in lost income fees and would love to sue Africell for lost income but what's that going to go??
Anyway, Africell is terrible. Definitely the worst mobile phone company i have ever used (and i have used closed to 50 as i travel globally extensively). But the sad part for Gambians is that it's probably the best mobile phone provider in The Gambia and there's not enough social/government pressure to give their citizens the basic internet services they deserve