Data point

Mobile connections by technology, Africa

The installed base still includes a substantial 2G and 3G layer, so leapfrogging cannot be assumed at continental level.

Source: GSMA Smartphone Adoption Report, September 2025 - 4G + 5G is the remainder after the report's reported 2G and 3G shares; figures are shares of mobile connections in Africa.

The case for technological leapfrogging in African markets is compelling because it is visible. Mobile money, mobile-first services and distributed energy have shown that a market does not always need to reproduce every stage of another region’s development. Incomplete legacy systems can lower switching costs and make a newer operating model more attractive.

But the phrase “no legacy” can conceal two very different realities. One is the absence of an obsolete layer that can be bypassed. The other is the absence of the complementary layer that makes any technology useful at scale. The first can be an advantage. The second is a constraint.

When a market can skip a generation

The cellular-network case is the most concrete version of this idea. In mature markets, operators often have a large installed base of 3G and 4G equipment, spectrum arrangements, devices and customers to migrate. A new generation has to coexist with those assets and justify the cost of modernising them. Where a market has less capital committed to an older layer, there can be more freedom to ask a different question: should a new coverage area go directly to a 5G service, perhaps using fixed wireless access, rather than repeat the entire historical sequence of 3G, then 4G, then 5G?

This is not a claim that every African market is legacy-free. GSMA reports that, as of September 2025, 2G and 3G still represented nearly half of mobile connections in Africa, and only seven countries had announced plans to phase out either technology by 2030. The relevant distinction is therefore local: some countries, cities, enterprise zones or greenfield developments may be able to deploy a newer layer without carrying the same sunk-cost burden as an established market. Others will still need 4G expansion and a careful migration from older networks.

The likely pattern is selective leapfrogging. 5G fixed wireless access can be a sensible way to provide broadband where fixed-line networks are thin and demand is concentrated. It is less likely to be the first answer everywhere. GSMA’s 2024 regional outlook expected 4G to become the primary technology in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030, with 5G remaining an earlier-stage share of connections. That is precisely why the investor question should be about the use case, not the label on the network.

Beyond radio networks

Cellular networks are only the clearest example. The same option can appear wherever a market is not deeply committed to an older layer and can build a more current one around actual local behaviour.

In financial services, mobile money and digital payments can extend access without requiring every customer journey to begin with a dense branch network. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 reports that account ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 49% in 2021 to 58% in 2024, while mobile money use remains the highest in the world. The important point is not that banking disappears. It is that the rails for identity, account access, payments, savings and credit can be assembled in a different order.

The same applies to public and commercial digital infrastructure. Digital identity, interoperable payments and trusted data exchange can become common foundations for services in health, agriculture, social protection and commerce. In energy, distributed generation and storage can sometimes serve a use case before a full centralised grid arrives. In logistics, a mobile-first coordination layer can make fragmented capacity visible before a physical network becomes more complete. None of these examples remove the need for institutions, assets or trust. They change the sequence in which those layers are built.

The opportunity is in the new stack

The mobile economy illustrates both sides. GSMA estimates that mobile technologies and services contributed $240 billion to Africa’s economy in 2025, or 7.8% of GDP, and expects the figure to reach $290 billion by 2030. The growth reflects the expansion of mobile connectivity, digital services and newer technologies such as AI.

That is the positive case: where a fixed or formal system is incomplete, a mobile-first product can create an alternative route to communication, payments, identity, distribution or service delivery. The winning product is often not the newest technology in isolation. It is the one that fits the actual user, device, payment behaviour, trust model and local cost structure.

For investors, this changes the object of attention. The opportunity is not simply to bring the latest technology to a market. It is to help build the stack around it: affordable devices, spectrum, fibre or other backhaul, reliable power, payments, identity, maintenance, local language, customer support, financing, data governance and the business model that keeps all of it operating.

The usage gap is the discipline

The same GSMA data provides the necessary counterweight. Almost one billion people in Africa live within mobile-broadband coverage but do not use mobile internet, representing 63% of the population. Device affordability, skills and relevant content remain material barriers. Operators are expected to invest more than $76 billion in network infrastructure between 2024 and 2030.

This is not an argument against leapfrogging. It is evidence that access to a modern network is not the same thing as participation in a digital economy. The distance between coverage and meaningful use is where many businesses will either create value or fail. A service that assumes a connected, banked, always-on customer can inherit the limitations of the system it was meant to improve.

The World Bank’s work on leapfrogging makes a similar point from a public-systems perspective. It identifies enabling conditions that include data architecture, laws, institutions, human capacity, technology and leadership. The language is less fashionable than “disruption,” but it is more useful. Technology can jump a layer; it cannot permanently ignore the conditions needed to operate, govern and maintain it.

Counter-case: the missing layer may be the business

There is a risk in treating every infrastructure gap as an invitation to deploy a more advanced product. Some gaps are not opportunities for a software overlay. They require capital-intensive physical infrastructure, patient institutional work or a change in regulation. In those cases, an imported product can be technically impressive and commercially irrelevant.

The stronger thesis is more demanding. It asks whether a company is using a discontinuity to remove an obsolete cost, or whether it is quietly rebuilding the missing layer that makes the rest of the system possible. The latter may look slower at first. It is often more defensible.

Leapfrogging is therefore not a shortcut through development. It is the disciplined construction of a newer stack, designed around the conditions that are actually present.

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