A new roadmap aiming to fast-track meaningful digital participation across Africa and support the ambition of connecting one billion people to the internet by 2030 has been launched by the GSMA and the Partnership for Digital Access in Africa (PDAA).
Named Advancing Digital Connectivity in Africa: Charting Africa's Path to 1 Billion Connected People by 2030, the report identifies priority actions for governments, industry, development partners and investors to move beyond expanding network coverage and enable more people to use the internet regularly, safely and productively.
The stakes are significant: GSMA Intelligence estimates that closing Africa's mobile internet usage gap by 2030 could add around $700 billion to the continent's GDP, as ITWeb reported last year, while transforming access to education, healthcare and financial services for hundreds of millions of people currently locked out of the digital economy.
The roadmap identifies three priorities for closing the gap: accelerating migration from 2G and 3G handsets to 4G/5G smartphones, integrating energy and connectivity investment, and reducing the cost of reaching rural and underserved communities.
The initiative targets 11 nations: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. Halving the usage gap across just these markets would bring an additional 245 million people online.
Despite widespread mobile broadband coverage, around 906 million people in Africa live within coverage but do not use mobile internet — almost 60% of the continent's population.
By comparison, 122 million people remain beyond the reach of a mobile broadband network altogether, meaning Africa accounts for nearly a third of the global usage gap.
The roadmap builds on the GSMA's State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report 2026, published earlier this month, which found that 3.1 billion people worldwide live within mobile broadband coverage but do not use mobile internet.
Launched at an event hosted by The Rockefeller Foundation in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the report sets out a definitive path forward.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of Liberia, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and PDAA co-chair, backed the launch, saying the goal is ambitious but achievable through public-private partnerships.
To close the gap, stakeholders must transition more than 600 million legacy mobile connections into meaningful 4G and 5G internet use.
"The roadmap finds that progress across these priorities must be reinforced by access to affordable, quality smartphones; practical digital skills; safe and trusted services; locally relevant content; digital public infrastructure; and policies that promote investment and inclusion," the report noted.
The roadmap calls for stakeholders to replace standalone interventions with a coordinated delivery model connecting policy, infrastructure, energy, devices, skills, safety and relevant digital services.
PDAA will serve as a platform to bring together public- and private-sector stakeholders, align investment pipelines, reduce duplication, share risk, and help proven solutions scale across markets.
John Giusti, GSMA chief regulatory officer and president of the GSMA Foundation, said: "Africa has already built much of the network foundation for its digital future. The urgent task now is to close the usage gap by making smartphones and services affordable, equipping people with practical skills, building trust, and ensuring connectivity delivers visible value in people's daily lives.
"This roadmap shows how governments, industry, and development partners can align investment and accountability around the outcomes that matter. Reaching one billion meaningfully connected Africans will require coordinated action across infrastructure, energy, devices, skills, and digital services."
Ibrahima Guimba-Saïdou, CEO of PDAA, said the continent cannot build its digital future on connectivity alone.
"A network can reach a community, but meaningful participation depends on the conditions around it: reliable energy, affordable devices, digital skills, and services people have a reason to use. This roadmap gives us a practical framework for bringing those conditions together and turning access into opportunity at scale."
The push mirrors efforts already under way elsewhere on the continent.
ITWeb Africa reported last month that Malawi's own usage gap — among the highest on the continent — could cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs in lost economic value if left unaddressed, while the GSMA is separately piloting a $30–$40 4G smartphone programme across six African countries to tackle the affordability barrier this new roadmap also identifies as central to closing the gap.
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