Handset cost, not signal, keeps most of Africa off mobile video

The figure or the record

GSMA, the mobile operators' industry body, publishes an annual regional report through its research arm, GSMA Intelligence. Its The Mobile Economy Africa 2026 report states that mobile technologies and services contributed $240 billion to Africa's economy in 2025, equal to 7.8% of regional GDP, and forecasts this will grow to $290 billion by 2030. The same report states that 63% of Africans remain offline, not for lack of network coverage but because of the cost of devices, data and sector-specific levies, and that an entry-level internet-enabled handset in the region represents 24% of monthly income on average in low- and middle-income countries, rising to as much as 80% in the poorest cases. The report's own landing page restates the 63% offline figure and the $240 billion 2025 contribution as its headline numbers.

What the documents establish

The report distinguishes network coverage from network use, a distinction any coin-based app depends on. It states that mobile broadband coverage already reaches the majority of the continent's population, so the barrier to a short-drama or any other paid mobile-video product is not signal but affordability of the handset and the data plan needed to reach it. The report also documents specific operator responses named within it: MTN MoMo's handset rent-to-own scheme in South Africa, Safaricom's device-bundling campaign in Kenya, and Ethio Telecom's instalment financing for low-cost 4G devices in Ethiopia, each aimed at the same device-cost barrier.

Scope and caveats

These are continent-wide figures from one industry body's research arm, not country-by-country measurements a single market can be read off directly, and the 2030 economic-contribution figure is explicitly a forecast, not a delivered result. The 24%-to-80%-of-income handset-cost range is itself a range across low- and middle-income countries generally, not a Africa-specific primary measurement independent of that broader dataset. No figure in this report addresses short-form drama, coin pricing or vertical video specifically; it describes the connectivity and affordability base such a market would need.

What to watch

This is editorial: the figure worth tracking is not the 2030 forecast but whether handset-cost interventions named in this report, such as the GSMA Handset Affordability Coalition's push to remove taxes on sub-$100 devices, actually narrow the 63% usage gap in the years ahead.

• Does a later GSMA report show the 63% offline figure declining as handset-financing schemes scale?
• Do any short-drama or coin-app operators disclose African user numbers against this affordability base?
• Does mobile money penetration, which the report ties to financial inclusion, extend to in-app coin purchases?

No short-drama market figure exists yet for Africa in this record, and that absence is itself informative: the report describes a connectivity and affordability floor still being built, which is the base rate any future market claim for the region would have to clear before it could be checked.