LILONGWE — Malawi has spent years building out mobile networks that now reach the vast majority of its population. Yet a new report suggests that infrastructure push has outpaced actual adoption, leaving the country with one of the widest usage gaps in Africa.
According to a report released Wednesday by the GSMA, the trade body representing mobile operators worldwide, 87 percent of Malawians lived within range of 4G coverage in 2025. But roughly 80 percent of the population isn’t using mobile internet at all — a gap far above the regional average of about 65 percent. Unique mobile internet penetration sits at just 12.5 percent, and only a third of the population owns a smartphone.
The report, unveiled at GSMA’s Digital Africa Summit, frames the disconnect as Malawi’s central digital policy challenge: coverage has largely solved the access problem, but affordability, skills, and economic conditions are keeping people offline anyway.
A Widening Gap Between Coverage and Use
The numbers point to a familiar pattern seen elsewhere on the continent, but more pronounced. Building towers and expanding signal footprints is often the easier half of digital inclusion. Getting people to actually buy a smartphone, afford data, and know how to use it is harder — and Malawi’s usage gap suggests that harder half remains largely unaddressed.
Mobile money offers a instructive contrast. Malawi has strong adoption there, with 75 percent of adults actively using mobile money services and more than 576 million transactions worth 8.6 trillion Malawian kwacha processed in 2025. That suggests Malawians will adopt digital tools when the value proposition is direct and the barriers to entry are low. Mobile internet, which requires a smartphone and ongoing data spending, has not cleared that bar for most of the population.
The GSMA report attributes the shortfall to device costs, limited digital skills, and structural issues including foreign exchange shortages and high energy costs that make it more expensive for operators to invest and for consumers to buy in.
The Economic Case for Closing the Gap
GSMA’s modeling estimates that closing part of this gap could generate 1.1 trillion kwacha in additional economic value and create 490,000 jobs by 2030, alongside a net positive fiscal impact of 179 billion kwacha from increased digital adoption and tax compliance. It projects that with the right policy changes, Malawi could reach 99 percent 4G coverage and add 810,000 new mobile internet users, bringing the total to 5 million.
Those figures come from GSMA’s own economic model, which the organization uses across similar reports in other African markets. As with any industry-commissioned projection, the assumptions behind the model — growth multipliers, sector spillovers, tax compliance estimates — aren’t independently verified in the report itself, and GSMA has a direct commercial interest in policies that expand its members’ subscriber base and reduce their tax and spectrum costs. The scale of the projected gains should be read with that in mind.
What the Report Asks For
The report’s recommendations lean heavily toward measures that benefit mobile operators directly: longer spectrum license terms, prioritized access to foreign exchange, and recognition of telecom infrastructure as critical national infrastructure. It also calls for eliminating the 10 percent excise duty on mobile services and cutting taxes on entry-level smartphones — changes that would lower costs for both operators and consumers.
Other recommendations address the demand side more directly: national digital skills programs, expansion of digital public services, and a coordinated National Digital Economy Strategy paired with a national AI strategy aligned to continental frameworks.
Caroline Mbugua, GSMA Africa’s senior director of public policy, said Malawi’s priority now is converting existing coverage into actual use. “With 80% of the population still offline despite network coverage, the priority now must be turning access into meaningful use,” she said, adding that addressing affordability, skills and investment barriers would let Malawi capture the growth on offer.
Unanswered Questions
The report does not detail how much the recommended tax cuts would cost the Malawian government in lost revenue, nor how that would be offset against the projected 179 billion kwacha fiscal gain.
It also doesn’t specify a timeline or funding source for the proposed national digital skills programs, which are likely to be the more expensive and slower-moving piece of closing the usage gap compared with regulatory changes like license terms or excise duties.
Malawi’s policymakers now face a choice GSMA frames as urgent: without action, the report warns, the country risks missing a window to convert its network investment into broader economic gains — a window that narrows as neighboring markets pursue similar reforms.
