When people talk about the Internet in Africa, the discussion often swings between two extremes. On one side, there is the story of rapid digital growth, smartphones, mobile money, and a young connected population. On the other side, there is the reality that hundreds of millions of people are still offline or only have limited access. Both views are true. Africa is making real digital progress, but Internet access and usage are still far below the levels seen in many other parts of the world. According to the ITU, 38% of Africa’s population used the Internet in 2024, making Africa the least connected ITU region in terms of Internet usage.
That figure shows progress, but it also highlights the scale of the gap. More than half of the continent’s population remains offline. The divide is especially sharp between cities and rural areas. The ITU reports that in 2024, Internet usage in Africa reached 57% in urban areas, but only 23% in rural areas. This is the largest urban-rural Internet gap of any ITU region. The reasons are familiar but serious: weaker infrastructure, lower incomes, fewer devices, less reliable electricity, and lower levels of digital literacy in many rural communities.
A key question is not only how many people in Africa use the Internet, but also how they access it. In much of Africa, the Internet is strongly mobile-first. For many people, the smartphone is not a secondary device used alongside fixed broadband at home; it is the main gateway to the online world. The ITU says that by 2024, mobile broadband covered 86% of Africa’s population. At the same time, 70% of the population was covered by 4G, 16% still relied on 3G, and 5G had only reached 11% of the population. That means the technical basis for mobile Internet is already much broader than actual Internet usage.
For a closer look at mobile connectivity, the GSMA figures for Sub-Saharan Africa are especially useful. According to the GSMA, there were about 527 million unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, equal to 44% of the population. More importantly, 27% of the population was connected to mobile Internet, which the GSMA estimated at around 320 million mobile Internet users. These are large numbers, but they also show how much room there still is for growth.
The GSMA data also help answer the question of how much of African Internet access is mobile. In Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, around 19% of the population was connected to mobile Internet via smartphone, while another 8% was connected to mobile Internet without a smartphone. In other words, mobile access is not only common; it is the dominant model of connectivity for a very large share of the population, and it does not always depend on modern high-end devices. This is one of the clearest signs that the expansion of the Internet in Africa is fundamentally tied to mobile networks.
One of the most important findings is that lack of infrastructure is no longer the only problem. According to the GSMA figures cited in ITU material, around 710 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa were not using the Internet in 2023 even though they lived in areas already covered by mobile broadband. This is known as the usage gap. A further 160 million people were still outside mobile Internet coverage entirely, which is called the coverage gap. This means the larger challenge is increasingly not just building networks, but helping people actually use them.
Why does that gap remain so large? The biggest barriers are affordability, especially the cost of smartphones and data bundles, as well as limited digital skills. The ITU reports that in 2024 the median cost of an entry-level mobile broadband plan with 2 GB per month in Africa was 4.2% of GNI per capita, still more than double the UN Broadband Commission’s affordability target of 2%. Even where coverage exists, many people are still priced out of regular Internet use.
Despite all of these challenges, the direction is clear: Internet growth in Africa is continuing, and it is being driven mainly by mobile technology. The GSMA expects 4G to become the dominant mobile technology in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030, accounting for 50% of connections, while 5G is projected to reach 17% of connections by the end of the decade. That suggests Africa’s digital expansion over the next several years will remain heavily mobile-centered rather than led by fixed home broadband.
In conclusion, the Internet in Africa is growing, but it remains unevenly distributed and heavily shaped by the realities of cost, geography, and infrastructure. About 38% of Africans were using the Internet in 2024, and a very large part of that connectivity is mobile. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 27% of the population was connected to mobile Internet in 2023, while mobile broadband coverage had already reached far more people than were actually online. That gap shows that Africa’s digital future will depend not only on building more networks, but also on making devices and data more affordable, improving digital skills, and expanding meaningful online access to the people who are still left out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Africa
https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-d/opb/i ... -PDF-E.pdf
https://event-assets.gsma.com/pdf/GSMA_ ... 24_Web.pdf