Mobile broadband: the coverage that does not create usage

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the network has won the game while usage has lost it. Mobile broadband infrastructure (3G or higher) now covers nearly 87% of the population, yet only 27% of people actually use mobile internet. The gap between these two figures has a name, the usage gap, and it reaches 60% of the population, more than four times the coverage gap (13%). It is the widest of any region in the world. The message is clear for West African governments and donors: continuing to fund only antennas amounts to building roads no one travels. The question is no longer whether the signal arrives, but why, once it has arrived, it fails to turn into usage. And behind this technical question lies a first-order economic stake, because every year of underuse leaves a considerable share of growth on the table.

Two gaps, not one

For twenty years, the debate on Africa's digital divide focused on coverage, that is, on whether the antenna exists. That battle is almost won. 4G coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 19% of the population in 2018 to 65% in 2023, and broadband in all its forms reaches about 87% of people. A residual coverage gap remains, around 13%, corresponding to the most remote areas where no network reaches. But most of the shortfall has moved elsewhere, and the public debate has not followed that shift.

This shift is the central data point of this article. The usage gap, defined by the GSMA as the share of the population living in an area covered by a mobile broadband network but not using it, reaches 60% in Sub-Saharan Africa. In other words, for every person who has no network, there are more than four who have it but do not use it. Confusing the two gaps means getting the policy wrong: pylons keep being subsidised when the blockage lies in the price of the smartphone, digital skills and the relevance of content. The distinction is not academic, it governs the allocation of public budgets: acting on the wrong gap means spending without converting a single additional user.

Coverage is no longer the main obstacle

Compared with other regions, Sub-Saharan Africa still lags on 4G coverage (65% against 92% for the world average), but the gap is closing fast and, above all, it no longer explains the usage shortfall. GSMA geospatial analyses show already very high national coverage in several West African countries. In Benin, 4G population coverage reached 88% in 2024, up from just 62% three years earlier. In Nigeria, it rose from 41% in 2019 to 84% in 2024. Signal availability has therefore ceased to be the limiting factor in the areas where most of the population lives.

This finding forces a change of grammar in public policy. As long as coverage was the bottleneck, every new euro invested in an antenna mechanically translated into new potential users. Today, in areas already covered, one more euro in infrastructure no longer converts anyone: action must target demand, a register that operators and governments master far less well than civil engineering. Building a pylon is an engineering problem bounded in time; convincing a rural household to buy a smartphone, to charge it, to know how to use it and to find concrete value in it is a social, cultural and economic problem, with no endpoint as clear as a completed construction site.

A decade where the signal ran faster than usage

The trajectory over time makes the diagnosis clear. Between 2015 and 2023, the coverage gap shrank by more than half, falling from around 41% to 11%, driven by a massive 4G rollout. Over the same period, the share of mobile internet users grew only from 15% to 30%, at a pace twice as slow, so that the usage gap, far from closing, widened from 45% to 59%. Coverage ran, usage walked. The two curves diverged, and it is precisely that divergence that defines the region's problem.

For every Sub-Saharan African without a network, more than four others have it but do not use it. The blockage is no longer the antenna, it is with the user.

What coverage averages hide

A national coverage rate is an average, and averages smooth over the very divides that should drive action. 4G covers nearly 100% of urban areas in Benin, but only 63% of rural areas. In Nigeria, it reaches 84% of the national population but drops to 48% in rural areas. Behind a reassuring national figure lies a two-speed geography, where cities are saturated with signal while a large share of the countryside remains out of reach. An extension budget steered on the national average alone would miss these pockets, precisely where the coverage gap does still exist.

The rural divide does not stop at coverage, it also contaminates usage. According to the GSMA, adults in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa are 48% less likely to use mobile internet than those in cities, a gap far wider than the global average (25%). Two divides therefore overlap in rural areas: where the signal arrives, usage remains lower than in the city, and where it does not arrive, the shortfall is total. Steering a digital policy on the national figure alone means ignoring that rural areas suffer both handicaps and hold most of the pool of users still to be won.

The same caution applies to usage across countries, where the gaps are spectacular despite comparable coverage. Across all technologies, the share of internet users ranges from 72% in Ghana and 60% in Senegal to 34% in Benin, 28% in Burkina Faso and 16% in Niger. A ratio of more than four to one separates the first from the last, even though these countries share network coverage levels far closer to each other than these usage rates. Signal availability therefore no longer explains these gaps: they come down to purchasing power, literacy, content and each country's own public policies.

The SIM card illusion

One indicator misleads more than the others: the number of mobile subscriptions. In most West African countries it exceeds 100 per 100 people, giving the image of digital inclusion already achieved. In Benin, it reaches 125.9 subscriptions per 100 people in 2024, up from 72.9 in 2017. In Côte d'Ivoire, it climbs to 183.9. But a subscription is not a person, and owning a SIM card does not mean using mobile internet. These rates count multiple SIM cards, business SIMs and purely voice or SMS usage; they therefore overstate real inclusion and mask the usage gap rather than measure it.

The smartphone, the missing link between SIM and usage

Between the ubiquitous SIM card and underused mobile internet sits a decisive link: the device. You cannot connect to broadband with a feature phone. Yet in Sub-Saharan Africa, the smartphone still accounts for less than half of mobile connections, the region showing the highest proportion of basic or feature phones in the world. Worse, a large share of the smartphones in circulation support only 3G, even where 4G is deployed. The device base therefore lags behind the network, and this hardware mismatch is one of the most concrete drivers of the usage gap: a person can live under a 4G antenna, hold a SIM and still remain offline, for lack of a device able to open a web page.

The three locks on usage, all documented

If the network is there and usage does not follow, it is because other barriers stand between the covered person and their first connection. The GSMA identifies three, converging and well documented, to which is added the now rising question of online trust and safety.

• The price of devices and data. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 1 GB costs on average 2.4% of monthly income, above the 2% affordability threshold set by the UN Broadband Commission. At the entry level, the 2 GB basket reaches 4.2% of GNI per capita in Africa, the most expensive of any region in the world. The cost of the smartphone itself often remains out of reach for the poorest households, locking access at the device stage.
• The shortfall in digital skills and literacy. Being able to read, write and operate an interface conditions usage. Without basic digital literacy, coverage remains an untapped capacity, an available network the user does not know how to activate.
• The lack of relevant content and services in local languages. An internet that does not speak the user's language, and that offers no services meeting their concrete needs, creates no reason to connect.
• Online trust and safety. The GSMA now cites concerns about digital safety among the barriers to adoption; to these locks is finally added limited access to electricity in rural areas, which prevents even charging the device.

The gender gap, a usage gap within the usage gap

The usage gap is not evenly spread between the sexes. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women are 32% less likely than men to use mobile internet. The gap has narrowed from 36% in 2022, but it remains one of the highest in the world and still leaves 202 million women offline in the region. This imbalance concentrates the three locks on usage, because women are more often exposed to a lack of means, a literacy shortfall and norms that restrict access to a device. Any demand-side policy that ignores this dimension will leave out half of the pool of users.

The stake also reads in economic value. Closing the gender gap in mobile internet is not only a matter of equity, it is a market: every woman who takes the step becomes a user of financial, health, education or e-commerce services. Ignoring this half of the population means cutting by as much the return on the investments already made in the network. It is an angle the CRAD knows closely, having carried it in the energy sector with the regional WOCEWA project, where the measurement of gender equality rested on sex-disaggregated data collected in the field. The same principle applies to the digital sphere: without sex-disaggregated data, the gender gap remains invisible in averages and therefore impossible to target.

4G becomes the majority, but usage does not automatically follow

Network quality is also improving. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 4G now accounts for 45% of mobile connections, ahead of 3G (37%) and 2G (15%), with 5G still marginal at 2%. The technological shift is therefore under way, and it improves the experience of those already connected. But it does not mechanically close the usage gap: upgrading the network for current users and converting non-users are two distinct tasks. The first is the operator's business, the second is a matter of demand, and it is the second that governs the region's catch-up.

The cost of inaction: 30 years and 700 billion dollars

Doing nothing has a price, and it is quantifiable. At the current pace of adoption, the GSMA estimates it would still take 30 years to close the usage gap in Africa. Across the continent, some 710 million people live in 2024 under the coverage of a broadband network without using it, nearly two thirds of the population. This is not an infrastructure deficit, it is a pool of users left fallow.

The economic counterpart is massive. Closing the usage gap by 2030 could add on the order of 700 billion dollars of GDP to Africa over the 2024-2030 period, a shortfall attributable to underuse and not to the absence of a network. The mechanics are known: a 10-point rise in broadband penetration increases GDP by 1.0 to 2.5%. Continuing to invest solely in coverage without lifting the barriers to usage therefore amounts to funding networks that remain underused, and to leaving a considerable share of growth on the table.

This potential is also measured against what mobile already weighs. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the mobile industry contributed around 140 billion dollars to GDP in 2023, nearly 7.5% of regional wealth, and this contribution could reach 170 billion by 2030 if the barriers to connectivity are lifted. In other words, the sector is already one of the region's leading economic engines, and most of its room for growth no longer lies in new antennas but in converting the hundreds of millions of people covered and not connected. Inaction is therefore paid not only in digital exclusion, it is paid in growth not captured, tax revenue not collected and jobs not created.

About 710 million Africans live under a broadband antenna without using it. At the current pace, closing this gap would still take thirty years.

Measuring the right gap: the CRAD angle

The steering of digital policy today suffers from a measurement flaw. The most available indicators, mobile subscription rates or average national coverage, are precisely those that mask the problem: they overstate inclusion and smooth over rural and gender divides. To act rightly, one must measure the real usage gap, disaggregated by setting, by gender and by income level, at the subnational scale, rather than settle for an aggregated national figure that says nothing about where or for whom the gap between available network and effective usage is greatest.

This measurement flaw has a concrete political cost. A ministry that tracks its digital sector on the SIM subscription rate alone believes it is at 126% inclusion when it is at 34% real usage; it will wrongly conclude that connectivity is settled and redirect its budgets elsewhere. Conversely, a decision-maker who has the usage gap mapped zone by zone knows exactly where the subsidised smartphone, the training or the local content will produce the most additional users per franc spent. The difference between the two lies not in ambition, but in the granularity of the data that informs the decision.

This is the conviction that guides the CRAD's work on digital data. Measuring, from reference sources (GSMA, ITU, World Bank) but also through field collection, the gap between coverage and real usage, broken down by zone and by population, means turning a reassuring national statistic into an investment roadmap. Mapping the usage gap means showing West African governments and donors where to act as a priority. Backed by a monitoring and evaluation system, this measurement also makes it possible to verify, campaign after campaign, that the euro spent on a device subsidy or on digital literacy does translate into new users, and not into a windfall effect. Without this fine-grained measurement, digital policy advances blind, funding the antenna where the blockage lies elsewhere.

Change the policy, not just the network

The reversal of perspective has concrete consequences. Since the barrier is no longer the antenna but demand, the priority of public budgets shifts from infrastructure to the user: targeted smartphone subsidies, lighter taxation on devices, digital literacy and the development of local content and services. These levers are less visible than an inaugurated telecom tower, but they are the ones that today convert coverage into usage, and thus into growth. The West African challenge is not to invent a technology, it is to apply, with consistency, a demand-side policy, targeting it through disaggregated data where the usage gap is widest.

Fundamentally, the West African digital divide has changed its nature without the public debate having fully registered it. It is no longer a coverage divide, it is a usage divide, and it deepens as the network is completed. The countries that reduce it will be those that stop measuring only the antenna to measure the user, and that steer their policies where the data shows that the available signal does not yet turn into a real connection. The technology is ready, the network is there; what remains to be built is a demand-side policy, patient, targeted and data-driven. It is long-term work, less spectacular than an antenna inauguration, but it is now the only work that converts available coverage into real usage, and usage into development.

← All insights