Cut smartphone taxes to bridge digital divide, GSMA urges African nations

The GSM Association has urged African governments, including Nigeria, to reduce taxes on entry-level smartphones and implement regulatory reforms to accelerate digital inclusion.

The association warned that about 961 million Africans covered by mobile broadband networks remain offline and risk being excluded from the artificial intelligence revolution.

The call was made on Wednesday at the ATU-GSMA Workshop on Advancing Africa’s Digital Future: Data, Connectivity and Satellite Regulation, held during the 7th Ordinary Session of the Conference Preparatory Committee of the African Telecommunications Union in Abuja.

The GSMA is a global organisation representing mobile network operators and the broader mobile ecosystem, working with governments and industry stakeholders to advance digital connectivity and policy development worldwide.

The workshop brought together regulators, policymakers and industry leaders to discuss measures to strengthen Africa’s digital economy.

Speaking at the event, the Senior Director of Public Policy and Communications at GSMA Africa, Caroline Mbugua, said Africa’s AI ambitions would depend largely on making smartphones affordable and ensuring more people used existing broadband infrastructure.

“We are now entering what you call the era of intelligence.

The era of intelligence requires that we have an already existing, robust infrastructure, robust connectivity that can support the growth of artificial intelligence on the continent and globally,” she said.

She noted that although mobile broadband coverage had expanded significantly across Africa, adoption remained low.

She stated, “We highlighted that we have a whole 961 million Africans that are covered by mobile broadband services but are not using the service. This is what we refer to as a usage gap. If this remains unaddressed, it means that this number will be left behind when it comes to the adoption of AI.”

According to her, governments should prioritise fiscal reforms to make smartphones more affordable.

“The reduction of taxes, particularly on entry-level devices, is one that is key and needs to be done as a matter of urgency,” she said, citing South Africa’s removal of a nine per cent luxury goods tax on entry-level devices as an example that boosted smartphone adoption. “Affordability is a challenge.”

Mbugua said only about nine per cent of Africans remained outside mobile broadband coverage, but connecting remote communities was expensive because infrastructure deployment in rural areas could cost between two and five times more than in urban centres while generating up to ten times less revenue.

She advocated technology-neutral regulations to enable operators deploy the most appropriate technologies, including satellite services, to bridge connectivity gaps, while urging governments to adopt “regulatory parity.”

Same service, same rules,” she said, explaining that providers offering similar communications services should operate under comparable regulatory obligations to promote competition and protect consumers.

She also unveiled the Digital Africa Index, which measures countries’ digital development and policy environment, describing it as a data-driven tool to guide reforms.

“The Digital Africa Index is a tool that we are calling on regulators and policymakers to use as a reference point when looking at decisions to be made because policy and regulatory reforms need to be done in a data-driven manner,” she said, adding that Nigeria was among the countries performing relatively well in several indicators but still had room for improvement.

Mbugua further disclosed that GSMA would launch its AI Atlas initiative to integrate African languages into large language models, noting that Nigeria already had four local languages participating in the project.

Also speaking, GSMA’s Head of Policy and Regulation, Michaela Angonius, urged African governments to modernise telecommunications licensing frameworks, arguing that technology-specific licences had become outdated.

“The current way of looking at licences for the industry is very technology specific, and that doesn’t help anyone when technologies are moving as fast as they are today,” she said.

She recommended technology-neutral licensing that would apply equally to mobile operators, internet service providers and satellite companies, saying this would help regulators respond more effectively to emerging technologies.

Angonius also called for better utilisation of Universal Service Funds, saying idle funds effectively imposed additional costs on operators.

“A lot of USF funds are unused. That de facto means that you have an additional tax on the industry, which raises the end-user prices. When we’re seeing that the usage gap is a big problem for the region, having additional taxes that are not being used is detrimental,” she said.

She added that improving investment conditions rather than imposing detailed quality-of-service regulations would produce better connectivity outcomes, while also calling for governments to remove levies on entry-level smartphones to improve affordability.

Earlier, the Secretary-General of the African Telecommunications Union, John Omo, said the latest GSMA Mobile Economy Africa Report highlighted the growing importance of telecommunications to Africa’s economy.

According to him, mobile technologies and services now contribute $240bn to the continent’s economy, support about 13 million jobs, and generate $45bn in government revenue annually.

Omo, however, stressed that expanding network coverage alone was no longer enough.

“Coverage cannot be our only measure of progress,” he said, noting that what mattered was whether people could afford digital services, had the skills to use them and trusted the platforms available.

He urged regulators to use the Digital Africa Index not merely as a report but as a tool to interrogate national performance, identify data gaps and strengthen evidence-based policymaking.

Also presenting the findings of the Digital Africa Index, Principal Economist at GSMA Intelligence, Kalvin Bahia, said Africa had made remarkable progress in expanding mobile broadband coverage, with the coverage gap falling from about 40 per cent a decade ago to less than 10 per cent in 2024.

He warned, however, that the usage gap remained the continent’s biggest digital challenge.

“If we don’t change this, and if the trend doesn’t accelerate, then closing the usage gap could take another 30 years,” Bahia said.

He noted that only about 28 per cent of Africans currently used mobile internet, while less than half accessed it through 4G or 5G smartphones despite much wider network availability.

Bahia added that countries with stronger policy and regulatory frameworks generally recorded better digital development outcomes, reinforcing the need for evidence-based reforms across the continent.