Dike Onwuamaeze
The GSM Association (GSMA) has called on African governments to come up with favourable fiscal and monetary policies that would enable mobile networks to realise the projected $76 billion investment in network infrastructure in Africa between 2025 and 2030.
This call was made recently by Senior Director, Public Policy & Communications, GSMA, Ms. Caroline Mbugua, who said that global satellite mobile (GSM) service will contribute $290 billion to the African economy in 2030.
Mbagua said that the sector contributed $240 billion to the continent’s economy, which about 7.8 per cent of Africa GDP, supported 13 million jobs and paid $45 billion in taxes and fees in 2025.
Africa, she said, does not have to convince anyone to invest in its mobile networks but its governments should revisit mobile devices’ taxation in order to encourage access to mobile network services.
She pointed out that $20 billion out of $45 billion the sector paid in taxes in 2025 came from VAT, sales taxes, excise and customs duties on handsets.
“Device (handset) taxation is the first place to look, because it goes directly to demand. The handset decides whether a network earns a return, and it is the most heavily taxed part of the chain. South Africa removed a 9.0 per cent excise duty on entry-level smartphones in April 2025. In the eleven months that followed, entry-level smartphone sales rose by 80 per cent and around 1.1 million additional smartphones were sold.
“The same logic applies to rights of way. By October 2025, eleven Nigerian states had waived right-of-way fees for fibre and seventeen more had capped them. The Nigerian Communications Commission linked those reforms directly to more than $1 billion in additional broadband rollout commitments. Where a regulatory cost falls, capital follows,” she said.
Mbagua also called for reliable access to foreign exchange because, “operators earn in local currency and buy equipment in dollars; if they cannot convert, a profitable business cannot reinvest, and no investor commits a second round into a market where the first is trapped.”
She also urged governments across the continent to designate telecommunications as critical national infrastructure, which would give networks the same forex priority, grid access and legal protection that power and water sectors already have.
Furthermore, she called for “technology-neutral authorisation, so a band can move from 4G to 5G without a fresh application” and “a published spectrum roadmap, so operators can plan capital over a decade rather than a licensing cycle.
“Fees set in local currency, so a devaluation does not raise costs at the moment customers have less to spend. None of this reduces spectrum revenue over time. It makes it predictable.”
She argued for handset financing scheme to help households to afford a phone, suggesting that undisbursed levies paid by mobile operators could be used to fund this scheme.