Rural connectivity

There are strong economic benefits from increased 4G connectivity. Research from the World Bank shows that it can reduce the number of households in extreme poverty by 4.3 percentage points, mainly due to increases in labour force participation, particularly among women.

In 2022, in his role as commissioner to the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, our former Chief Executive, Nick Read, chaired a new working group to forge multi-stakeholder action to connect 3.4 billion people with smartphones by 2030.

In order to drive digital inclusion to the hardest-to-connect communities, we announced in March 2022 that Vodafone will invest US$190 million over the next five years to increase our 4G population coverage to an additional 80 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa. This means that we have committed to increase our 4G population coverage from 54% (higher than the African average of 49%) to approximately 85% across six Sub-Saharan African countries. This pledge was made as part of the ITU Partner2Connect digital coalition and we will continue to develop other partnerships to help us achieve this goal.

We know that when people can access mobile internet, they are able to use services that improve their lives. For example 1.6 billion mobile subscribers have used mobile to monitor their health and 1.2 billion use mobile financial services.

The challenges arising from the digital divide between urban and rural areas across the EU have been brought into sharp relief by COVID-19, as those with reliable, high-speed connections have been better positioned to minimise their sense of social isolation, interruption to work and education to get essential items.