Force 04 / Technology & Digital
Nearly everyone has a phone. Most are still offline.
Connection and use are different things, and the gap between them is where the market is.
Where it stands
Coverage is not usage.
There are 90.4 mobile subscriptions for every hundred people in Sub-Saharan Africa. On that measure the continent is connected.
Internet use tells a different story. It reached 35.7 percent in 2025, up from 29.0 percent in 2021. Growing quickly, and still leaving nearly two thirds of people outside.
The gap is not mostly about network reach. In most of the region a signal exists where people live. What is missing is an affordable device, an affordable data bundle, and a reason to use it that repays the cost.
Payments are the exception, and they show what closing the gap looks like. Mobile money works because it solves a problem people already had, using a phone they already owned.
What decides it
What decides whether it gets used.
Cost per useful hour
Data priced at a small share of income in one country is priced at several hours of work in another. The same bundle is a different product in each.
The middle mile
Subsea cables have made international capacity abundant and cheap at the coast. Moving it inland, over terrestrial fibre through several countries, is where the cost and the failure sit.
Power under compute
Compute follows reliable electricity, cool air and a fibre route, in that order. Everything else can be imported.
What outsiders miss
Payments, lending and identity are regulated activities everywhere. A product that scales quickly usually arrives at a rule that was written before it existed.
What it means
The network is built. The reason is next.
Ninety phones for every hundred people is a distribution network most markets would envy. What gets built on top of it is still open. It will be built by people who understand the customer, not the tower.
The Brief
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