Rural connectivity toolkit: Improving digital coverage with innovative financing

Africa’s digital transformation is generating big changes and benefits for many parts of the economy and society. But hundreds of millions of people still have no internet connections. For those who have internet access, prices can be high and bandwidth is often severely limited. Many African countries lack the technical capabilities and financing to plan big telecom projects that can fill these gaps. The lack of digital connections also makes it much harder to fight crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, because people do not receive critical and timely information and because they are not able to work away from the office. The toolkit addresses the reasons that the private sector feels it is too risky to invest in telecommunications infrastructure and explains the ways we can increase financing in the market and offer technical assistance to improve projects and encourage expansions into rural areas.