Soaring memory costs make $30 phones unaffordable for Africa’s poorest

The GSMA’s latest findings reveal that a $30 smartphone, once considered accessible for Sub-Saharan Africa’s poorest, now demands 76% of their monthly income. 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. This surge has priced out the very devices intended to close the digital divide for those most in need.

Just a few years earlier, a $30 phone could have reached nearly 1.6 billion people already within mobile broadband coverage, while a $20 model might have connected 2.2 billion. Today, however, the cost explosion has erased those possibilities. Globally, the poorest 20% of households now spend 44% of their income on a basic handset. The divide between online and offline populations has widened to 3.1 billion worldwide, with 906 million of those offline in Africa alone. New users coming online fell to 160 million in 2025, down from 190 million the previous year.

The GSMA’s Handset Affordability Coalition had already begun trials in six African countries, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, with the goal of delivering $30–$40 devices. But in March, they acknowledged that rising memory costs were making these targets increasingly difficult. The coalition called on governments to eliminate or reduce taxes on entry-level 4G phones, though the September report does not provide any updates on the pilots’ status.

Two solutions have been proposed to address the crisis. First, the GSMA advocates for increased supply of low-cost components from chipset and memory manufacturers. Second, it urges governments to lower or remove taxes that hinder adoption. The first approach faces global market constraints, while the second risks reducing government revenue. Meanwhile, the sub-$100 smartphone market is shrinking rapidly, with global shipments projected to decline by the largest margin ever recorded.

Without intervention, the $30 and $20 phone benchmarks remain unattainable. The memory shortage has already pushed up IT hardware costs for African businesses, and the affordability crisis shows no signs of easing. Governments and manufacturers must act, but current momentum falls short of reversing the trend.