At Mobile World Congress 2026, the GSMA and the Handset Affordability Coalition announced a major initiative: to offer $40 4G smartphones to connect millions of people across Africa.
An ambitious project, but how ready are the mobile networks that will need to support them? nPerf’s 2025 data from Congo, Nigeria and Ethiopia paints a mixed picture.
Speeds still struggling to support everyday usage
First observation: speeds remain far below European standards. Congo shows the strongest performance of the three, with 12.8 Mb/s download and 6.26 Mb/s upload.
Nigeria follows with 9.97 Mb/s download, while Ethiopia trails at 6.73 Mb/s, barely enough to watch a video in standard quality without interruptions.
For future users of low-cost 4G smartphones, this means that the actual experience will depend just as much on the quality of the local network as on the device itself.
Nigeria stands out in streaming, Ethiopia struggles with latency
Beyond raw speeds, real-world usage tells a different story. Nigeria achieves the highest streaming performance index in the group at 62.28%, a level that allows relatively smooth video playback, but falls short in web browsing (27.36%).
In practical terms, this slows access to online services, administrative procedures and e-commerce.
Congo shows the opposite profile: it has the best latency of the three (123 ms), but a streaming index of only 41.88%, the lowest performance among the three countries in this area.
Ethiopia concentrates the most weaknesses: latency of 258 ms (more than double that of Congo), making video calls and real-time interactions particularly unstable, despite mid-range browsing (35.52%) and streaming (49.89%) performance indices.
The $40 initiative: a catalyst, provided infrastructure keeps up
The equation is simple: increasing the number of connected users without strengthening networks leads to greater congestion.
But the effect can also work in reverse: strong demand has historically pushed operators to invest. This is precisely the lever the GSMA and the Handset Affordability Coalition are relying on.
For the initiative to deliver on its promise of digital inclusion, nPerf’s data points to a clear priority in each of the three countries: reducing latency in Ethiopia, improving browsing performance in Nigeria, and enhancing streaming quality in Congo.
Three distinct challenges, but one shared objective: ensuring that the $40 smartphone does not become an empty promise due to networks that fail to keep up.
