NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

By Paula Gilbert

Sub-Saharan Africa is the second worst global region when it comes to the mobile gender gap.

This is according to the Mobile Gender Gap Report 2019 from GSMA Connected Women, which shows that in Sub-Saharan Africa, women are 15% less likely than men to own a mobile device. Women in the region are also 41% less likely to use mobile Internet. In fact, 86 million women in Sub-Saharan Africa still remain unconnected.

“Mobile access and use has grown dramatically in LMICs [low- and middle-income countries] in recent years, but not equally. A gender gap in both mobile ownership and mobile Internet use persists across these markets, and is significantly wider in certain regions, particularly South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa,” the report says.

It found that women’s ownership has increased since 2014 and the number of women who own a mobile phone has risen by over 250 million.

“Over 80% of women in LMICs have a phone, which is amazing, and most women access the Internet on their phone. So it’s really changing lives and is the tool that is most accessible but while that’s impressive, there’s still a very big gender gap,” Claire Sibthorpe, head of Connected Women at GSMA, told ITWeb in an interview.

The report’s findings are based on the results of over 20 000 face-to-face surveys commissioned by GSMA Intelligence across 18 LMICs.

Photo courtesy of Internews Europe.