Technology & Digital/Force / 04
Nearly everyone has a phone.
Most are still offline.
Connection and use are different things, and the gap between them is where the market is.
The state of it/01
Coverage is not
usage.
There are 90.4 mobile subscriptions for every hundred people in Sub-Saharan Africa. On that measure the continent is connected.
Internet use tells a different story. It reached 35.7 percent in 2025, up from 29.0 percent in 2021. Growing quickly, and still leaving nearly two thirds of people outside.
The gap is not mostly about network reach. In most of the region a signal exists where people live. What is missing is an affordable device, an affordable data bundle, and a reason to use it that repays the cost.
Payments are the exception, and they show what closing the gap looks like. Mobile money works because it solves a problem people already had, using a phone they already owned.
What decides it/02
What decides
whether it gets used.
Data priced at a small share of income in one country is priced at several hours of work in another. The same bundle is a different product in each.
Adoption follows the ratio, not the absolute price. Any forecast that ignores that will over-predict every time.
Subsea cables have made international capacity abundant and cheap at the coast. Moving it inland, over terrestrial fibre through several countries, is where the cost and the failure sit.
Landlocked markets pay a large premium for exactly this reason. The cable landing gets the announcement. The middle mile decides the price.
Compute follows reliable electricity, cool air and a fibre route, in that order. Everything else can be imported.
This is why data centre investment concentrates in a handful of cities rather than spreading with demand. The constraint is the grid, not the appetite.
Payments, lending and identity are regulated activities everywhere. A product that scales quickly usually arrives at a rule that was written before it existed.
The companies that survive treat the regulator as a counterparty from the first month, not as an obstacle discovered in year three.
What it means/03
The network is built.
The reason is next.
Ninety phones for every hundred people is a distribution network most markets would envy. What gets built on top of it is still open. It will be built by people who understand the customer, not the tower.
The Brief/
The NextStep Africa
Brief.
What the engine turns up, every fortnight. From Lagos.
- What moved
- The change that mattered, and the number under it.
- How it connects
- The systems involved, and what one does to another.
- What it turns on
- What has to go right, and who is already building it.
- What to watch
- One indicator, and when it resolves.
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From the founder's desk.
NextStep Africa / Lagos