Nigeria has been chosen as one of six African nations to participate in a GSMA-led initiative aimed at providing affordable smartphones, a move poised to address the country’s significant digital inclusion gap. The pilot program, which involves five other countries—Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda—focuses on making low-cost 4G smartphones available at approximately $40.
This initiative aims to tackle the “usage gap” in mobile internet adoption, where network coverage is accessible, but the high cost of devices limits usage. GSMA identifies Nigeria as a crucial testing ground due to its high mobile network penetration coupled with persistent challenges in smartphone ownership.
Over the last decade, significant investments have been made in expanding 3G, 4G, and emerging 5G networks throughout Nigeria. Despite these advancements, millions of Nigerians remain either offline or inadequately connected, primarily due to the financial inaccessibility of smartphones.
The GSMA highlights that Africa comprises about 33% of the global unconnected population and has the lowest smartphone ownership rate worldwide, estimated at just 24% for 2024. Within Sub-Saharan Africa, the affordability of smartphones poses the highest barriers, accounting for approximately 26% of monthly GDP per capita, compared to an average of 16% in other low- and middle-income nations.
In Nigeria, economic factors such as rising inflation and currency pressures further exacerbate the challenges faced by low-income individuals in accessing entry-level smartphones, despite improved network coverage.
The GSMA’s Handset Affordability Coalition is spearheading this pilot program, which includes prominent telecom operators such as Airtel, MTN, Orange, Vodacom, Axian Telecom, and Ethio Telecom. This coalition aims to establish minimum specifications for entry-level 4G smartphones to ensure that affordability does not compromise essential features like memory, RAM, display quality, battery life, and camera performance.
With mobile internet becoming increasingly vital for education, financial services, healthcare access, e-commerce, and other digital public services, Nigeria is recognized as a key area for enhancing digital participation across the continent.
The GSMA emphasizes that more than three billion people worldwide remain offline, despite extensive mobile broadband coverage, highlighting the critical need to address affordability to promote digital inclusion.
The pilot program is part of the broader expansion of the Handset Affordability Coalition, which has grown to include 25 members as of September 2025. This coalition collaborates on strategies to reduce taxes on entry-level smartphones, lower manufacturing costs, and create innovative financing models to make devices more accessible.
Vivek Badrinath, Director-General of the GSMA, stated that affordable smartphones are essential for achieving digital and financial inclusion, economic opportunity, and innovation. He underscored that the initiative aims to send a clear demand signal to manufacturers to ramp up the production of low-cost 4G smartphones.
As the telecom industry shifts its focus from merely expanding network coverage to addressing inequalities in access and usage of mobile internet services, Nigeria’s pilot program serves as a test case for how coordinated industry efforts can significantly enhance digital inclusion in markets where infrastructure already exists but access remains inconsistent.
Ultimately, the GSMA asserts that closing the smartphone gap in Africa could be the most effective means to bring millions of new users online and foster broader participation in the digital economy.
Source Technology.
