The impact of mobile phone penetration on African inequality

The purpose of this paper is to complement theoretical and qualitative literature with empirical evidence on the income-redistributive effect of mobile phone penetration in 52 African countries.

Robust ordinary least squares and two stage least squares empirical strategies are employed.

The findings suggest that mobile penetration is pro-poor, as it has a positive income equality effect.

“Mobile phone”-oriented poverty reduction channels are discussed.

It deviates from mainstream country-specific and microeconomic survey-based approaches in the literature and provides the first macroeconomic assessment of the “mobile phone”-inequality nexus.