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Can $40 smartphone close the digital divide in African countries?

Posted By: Ramesh Sharma Posted On: Apr 05, 2026Share Article

Victor Adewale for Rest of World

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

Can a $40 smartphone bring Africa online?

On March 3, the GSMA, a global advocacy and lobby group for the mobile communications industry, announced partnerships to pilot $40 smartphones in Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda in 2026.

“Affordable 4G smartphones at scale could bring tens of millions of people online, unlocking access to education, healthcare, financial services, e-commerce, and AI-powered tools,” GSMA said in a press release.

Around 960 million Africans don’t use mobile internet despite living within the coverage area, suggesting device affordability, not infrastructure, is the barrier. At $40, a 4G smartphone would cost only about 10% more than the global average selling price of a feature phone, according to Counterpoint Research.

But at a time when the global average price of a smartphone has surpassed $400, making and scaling an ultracheap smartphone won’t be easy, industry experts and analysts said. Over the last decade, several affordable phone projects have failed due to poor economics, technology limitations, and ecosystem issues.

“You can hit $40 if the device is stripped right back: small display, minimal RAM and storage, older 4G chipsets, basic cameras, Android Go-style software, and almost no margin,” Steven Athwal, managing director and founder of The Big Phone Store, a UK-based refurbished tech retailer, told Rest of World. “The problem is making it usable, durable, and available at scale.”

GSMA has brought together major mobile operators, including Airtel, Vodafone, and Orange; manufacturers; financing institutions; and global organisations like the World Bank Group and the International Telecommunication Union to make and sell these phones.

Several previous experiments have proved too ambitious.

In 2016, India experimented with a $4 Freedom 251 smartphone. Despite the initial euphoria, the experiment collapsed due to an unviable cost structure, misleading marketing, and eventual manufacturing and delivery failures.

Even the more reasonable attempts in India – Mozilla’s $25 Firefox phone and Google’s Android One that cost $50-$100 – fizzled out over concerns with poor performance, low storage, and stiff competition from Chinese brands like Xiaomi and Realme, whose phones were slightly more expensive but superior in quality.

“These limitations often push consumers, especially in price-sensitive markets, to choose secondhand or refurbished smartphones instead, which would normally come with higher specifications,” Ahmad Shehab, research analyst at Counterpoint, told Rest of World.

Africa might be more open to cheaper options, given that four in five smartphones sold on the continent are under $200. In 2023, Itel released its most cost-effective 4G smartphone, the A60, at under $100 across 17 African nations. A60’s sales figures aren’t publicly available. But Itel’s parent company, China’s Transsion, also sells Infinix and Tecno, two other affordable smartphone brands, and holds half of the African smartphone market.

Making a phone that’s cheap but feature-laden is only getting harder.

Memory capacity, which historically accounted for around 10%-15% of a smartphone’s bill of materials, surged to 30%-40%, according to a February report by market intelligence firm Trendforce. The bill is a detailed list of raw materials, parts, and components needed to manufacture a smartphone.

“In a global context of rising memory costs, governments have an important role in bridging the usage gap. Removing taxes and import duties on entry-level 4G smartphones will be critical to achieving scale,” GSMA director Vivek Badrinath said in the press release.

Governments can help by simplifying customs, supporting local assembly where viable, and pairing devices with affordable financing, Athwal said.

In 2023, telecom major Vodafone proposed using the Indian government’s Universal Services Obligation Fund, earmarked to provide connectivity in rural areas, to disburse funds for Indians to buy 2G and 4G phones. But the fund could only be used for investing in infrastructure – and phones, by definition, aren’t considered part of it.

“Even if they would [subsidise], the customer has to still find ways to pay for services,” Faisal Kawoosa, chief analyst at market intelligence firm TechArc, told Rest of World. “I think it’s more about finding an appropriate service model for this user base with a smartphone at the center and then ironing out any policy and regulatory hiccups.”

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

Source: Scroll
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