An entry-level smartphone costs the poorest fifth of people in Sub-Saharan Africa 76% of a month’s income. The $30 and $20 price points meant to fix that are now out of reach, according to the GSMA.
The association of mobile operators said on 15 September 2026, in its State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report, that memory prices more than doubled between the third quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, then rose by a further 80 to 90% in the second quarter. Across low- and middle-income countries as a whole, the same handset costs the poorest 20% of people 44% of their monthly income.
What the targets were supposed to unlock
Until a year ago, the GSMA says, bringing entry-level smartphones down to $30 could have made them affordable to almost 1.6 billion people already living within mobile broadband coverage, and a $20 phone to about 2.2 billion. Those people already have a signal. The device price is one of the main reasons they stay offline.
The report puts the global usage gap at 3.1 billion people and shows the rate of new users slowing: 160 million people came online in 2025, down from 190 million the year before. In Africa, the same gap is about 906 million people, as the GSMA and the Partnership for Digital Access in Africa set out in a roadmap this week.
African pilots, priced before the squeeze
In March, the GSMA’s Handset Affordability Coalition chose 6 African countries to pilot affordable 4G smartphones in 2026: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The coalition brings together the G6 group of African operators, handset makers, the World Bank Group, the ITU and financing institutions, and it aimed for devices in the $30 to $40 range.
Even then it warned that the surge in memory costs was making that range “increasingly difficult to attain”, and it asked governments to reduce or remove taxes and import duties on entry-level 4G phones. The GSMA’s September release does not give an update on the pilots.
Who can move the price?
The GSMA’s answer targets the supply chain. It calls on chipset and memory manufacturers “to take meaningful steps to increase availability of affordable components for entry-level handsets”, and expects global smartphone shipments to see their largest annual decline on record, driven by the collapse of the sub-$100 segment.
The same memory shortage has already pushed up what African businesses pay for IT hardware. Governments hold the other lever. The GSMA’s country report on Rwanda last week made the same case for cutting device taxes where they suppress adoption.
Neither lever is quick. Memory prices are set in a global market that African operators and governments do not control, and tax cuts cost treasuries revenue up front. Until one moves, the GSMA’s verdict stands: the $30 and $20 phones remain out of reach.
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