At the ongoing World Telecommunication Development Conference– various panelists have pointed out the need to have universal, but most importantly, affordable internet for all.

Reports note that an estimated 3.6 billion people are still offline, most of them in low-income countries and therefore, are excluded from the digital promises.

This comes at a time when the world is gearing for the digital era. A prerequisite to access opportunities in this digital era is access to good-quality, reliable, affordable, and safe internet connectivity.

According to the State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report of 2021, In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 28 per cent of the population are connected to broadband, 19 per cent are not covered with mobile internet and the usage gap is as high as 53 per cent. This is mainly due to limited affordability.

45 per cent of people living in the same region use feature phones, 36 per cent use 3G smartphones, and 12 per cent use 4G/5G smartphones. Rural-urban internet use gap remains significantly high, reads the report.

In Rwanda, during the fourth quarter of 2021, only 1,943,786 smartphones were operational or active (approximately 15 per cent of the entire population), according to data from Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA). This means that if a firm rolls out an application in the market, their target market is only 1,943,786 in a market of a population of over 8 million adults.

The boundary between connected and unconnected translates into clear consequences for employment, education, family and social life, and access to information.

According to the 2020 Affordability report by Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), there is a need to have National Broadband Plans; with interests of making public investments more effective, encouraging private sector investments, and creating new partnerships and sources of accountability.

Connectivity and broadband are no longer a luxury but a pre-requisite for social economic development.

The statistics of the connectivity gap ought to motivate stakeholders across board to consider ways to ensure that the masses have access to gadgets as well affordable and reliable connectivity. The motivation for stakeholders to seek to have an intervention is that benefits of increased broadband will not only be for the masses but also investors and business as it improves the opportunities in the ecosystem.