Connectivity is an affordability problem, not just a coverage problem

Coverage maps have a way of flattering African connectivity. The story they tell is mostly one of progress: 4G is reaching more places, 5G is starting to appear in capital cities, fibre is being laid. The story they hide is who can actually afford to use the network they nominally live under, and who has the devices and skills to do anything useful with it. Treating connectivity as primarily an affordability and skills problem — not a coverage problem — produces a different and more honest brief for public-service design.

The ITU’s most recent figures put internet usage in Sub-Saharan Africa at around 38 percent in 2024, against a global average of about 68 percent. Roughly 14 percent of people on the continent still live outside any mobile broadband coverage at all. Affordability is the binding constraint for many of the rest: the median price of a 2 GB mobile data package in 2024 was equivalent to about 4.2 percent of average per-capita income, more than double the Broadband Commission’s “two-percent” affordability target. Coverage without affordability is not connectivity in any meaningful sense.

The economic counterweight is real. The GSMA estimates that mobile technologies and services generated about USD 140 billion of economic value in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023 and supported around 3.7 million jobs directly and indirectly. Digital public services — payments, identity, social protection, health and education delivery — are where that productivity translates into government capacity, but only if the underlying access is broad and trustworthy.

The implication for city programmes is to stop treating connectivity as a separate “tech” workstream. The ECA framework for digital urbanisation makes the connections explicit: digital infrastructure, affordability, digital skills and e-government are four sides of the same problem. Open networks, shared infrastructure, accessible service interfaces and rigorous data protection are governance choices, and they decide whether digital services include or exclude.

Done well, connectivity becomes the backbone of inclusive public services. Done badly, it creates a faster lane for the already-connected and leaves the rest further behind.

Sources

• ITU — Facts and Figures 2024 (internet usage, mobile broadband coverage, affordability).
• Broadband Commission — affordability target (2 percent of monthly per-capita income for 1 GB of mobile broadband).
• GSMA — Mobile Economy Sub-Saharan Africa 2024 (USD 140 bn economic value, 3.7 million jobs in 2023).
• UNECA — framework for digital urbanisation (digital infrastructure, affordability, skills, e-government).