Recently, while spending some time in an African country, I’ve reached (or reaffirmed) the conclusion that the smartphone is indeed the motor of the new global economy.

Being a European (Portuguese) citizen, I had already understood that the uprising of Smartphones had drastically improved the way society works. In the last few years (5?) new jobs had appeared (not only in programming and manufacturing, but also in services like uber, uber eats, glovo, etcetera) and new ways of communication had replaced the old ones (courier had survived the e-mail but with whatsapp and other over-the-top services the story might be a little different). Even television is being cannibalized by youtube, netflix, hbo, amazon prime, and others.

But in Africa… What will the smartphone penetration do to the continent of the future?

Well... Everything, one might argue. Nowadays we can use a little device to suppress decades of isolation and African leaders have understood that very well. Everything can be done through a smartphone. Every company has an android or ios app. Even uber eats / glovo have their own competitors appearing in the continent.

The smartphone is being used to do much more than communicate. It’s being used to pay (mobile money is a reality here now), to entertain, to be entertained, to learn and even to interact with the public (state) administration.

Last month, Rwandan tech company Mara Group just released the first (two) entirely-African-made smartphones.

Recently GSMA posted: “Sub-Saharan Africa will remain the fastest growing region, with a CAGR of 4.6% and an additional 167 million subscribers over the period to 2025. This will take the total subscriber base to just over 600 million, representing around half the population. During 2019, 3G will overtake 2G to become the leading mobile technology in the region, with just over 45% of total connections by the end of the year. 3G adoption has doubled over the last two years as a result of network coverage expansion and cheaper devices. We also see mobile-enabled platforms increasingly disrupting traditional value chains in different verticals across the region. These platforms — mostly developed by a rapidly expanding local tech start-up ecosystem — aim to eliminate inefficiencies in conventional business models, as well as extend the reach of services and provide greater choice to customers”.

The next few years will be marked by the real smartphone revolution. When even the elderly population embraces the power of these devices and with the IoT advent, we will live in a hyper-connected world, a real global village and Africa will play the most interesting role in this revolution.