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The number of mobile phone subscribers in east and central Africa will grow by 134 percent in the next five years, industry watchers forecast on Wednesday. The penetration rate for the region is only 9 percent, they said, far lower than 21 percent for the rest of Africa. “We expect 75 million new subscribers in east and central Africa by 2011,” Thecla Mbongue, a research analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media research group, told Reuters in May 2007.