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Mobile Economy Emerges as a Pillar of Africa’s Growth
Mobile technologies and services contributed $240 billion to Africa’s economy in 2025, representing 7.8% of the continent’s GDP, according to the Mobile Economy Africa 2026 report by GSMA.
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Beyond economic output, the mobile ecosystem supported approximately 13 million jobs and generated $45 billion in public revenues, reinforcing the sector’s central role in driving economic growth, innovation, and digital transformation across Africa. Major beneficiaries include Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and other fast-digitising economies experiencing rapid digital expansion.
From Connectivity to Digital Transformation Partnerships
The report notes that Africa’s mobile industry is entering a new phase of development. After a decade focused on expanding network coverage, operators are now prioritising how to unlock greater value from digital networks for consumers, businesses, and governments.
Across the continent, mobile operators are evolving beyond traditional connectivity providers into digital transformation partners, deploying artificial intelligence (AI), expanding digital services, and opening network capabilities to developers through standardised APIs. According to GSMA Intelligence, 79% of African operators now identify digital transformation partnerships as a primary enterprise objective.
AI, APIs and the Next Wave of Innovation
Mobile operators are increasingly using AI to enhance network performance, improve customer experience, and enable new digital services. However, Africa’s linguistic diversity—accounting for over 30% of the world’s languages—presents challenges, as most leading AI models remain trained on high-resource languages such as English.
To address this, initiatives like “AI language models in Africa, by Africa, for Africa” are strengthening local data, talent, computing capacity, and policy frameworks to support African-led AI development.
The report also highlights growing momentum behind GSMA Open Gateway, which allows operators to expose standardised network APIs to developers and enterprises. These APIs are enabling new use cases in fraud prevention, identity verification, digital trust, financial services, e-commerce, and digital government platforms.
Economic Outlook: $290bn Contribution by 2030
Looking ahead, GSMA projects that mobile technologies and services will contribute $290 billion to Africa’s economy by 2030, as digital adoption deepens and connectivity continues to boost productivity, innovation, and economic development.
According to Vivek Badrinath, Africa’s opportunity now lies in extracting more value from existing connectivity rather than simply expanding coverage.
He noted that realising this potential will require sustained investment, innovation-friendly policies, and stronger collaboration across the technology supply chain to close the digital usage gap and make digital services more affordable and accessible.
Africa’s Biggest Digital Challenge: Adoption, Not Coverage
While mobile broadband networks now cover most of Africa’s population, usage remains the continent’s biggest digital hurdle. The report finds that:
- 63% of Africans live within mobile broadband coverage but do not use mobile internet
- Only 9% remain outside broadband coverage
Affordability is identified as the single largest barrier to adoption, alongside digital skills gaps and social factors limiting effective use of digital technologies.
Policy Choices Will Shape Africa’s Digital Future
GSMA emphasises that policy decisions will determine whether Africa can fully capture the next phase of digital growth. Key factors include:
- Investment incentives and regulatory certainty
- Spectrum availability
- Measures to improve affordability
- Support for digital skills development
Mobile operators across Africa are expected to invest over $76 billion in network infrastructure between 2024 and 2030. Evidence from several markets also shows that reducing taxes on devices and digital services can significantly accelerate adoption and expand access to the digital economy.
Key Findings: Mobile Economy Africa 2026
- Mobile technologies contributed $240bn to Africa’s economy in 2025 (7.8% of GDP)
- Economic contribution projected to reach $290bn by 2030
- 13 million jobs supported by the mobile ecosystem in 2025
- $45bn generated in public revenues
- $76bn+ expected investment in network infrastructure (2024–2030)
- 63% usage gap despite widespread broadband coverage
- 5G adoption forecast to reach 21% of total connections by 2030
