Mobile technologies and services contributed approximately $240 billion to Africa's economy in 2025, according to the GSMA, even as nearly one billion Africans remained offline from mobile internet that year. The figure underscores both the continent's digital potential and the stark divide between those connected and those excluded from the growing digital economy.
Every online interaction leaves traces. When someone in Kampala, Kigali, Nairobi or Lagos searches for a job, watches career advice videos, applies for loans or browses business opportunities, those signals create a digital footprint. Telecommunications companies retain network and connection records including location metadata. Different organisations across the continent see different parts of users' digital lives, sometimes combining information from multiple sources to build profiles of interests, routines, spending habits and financial vulnerability.
Data collection offers genuine benefits. Better information can improve services in transport, healthcare, agriculture and finance across Africa. However, the commercial value of user data raises critical questions about who controls it and how it gets used. Engagement systems may promote misleading content to keep people watching. Political campaigns can target different messages to different audiences, often without users understanding why their feeds look different from their neighbours'.
The challenge centres on control and fairness. While there is no single reliable figure for foreign-app downloads across Africa, foreign platforms generate substantial value from data created by African users. Information may be stored locally but processed using foreign-owned software or infrastructure. The question becomes who builds products from African data, decides how it is used, and captures the resulting economic value.
The African Union's Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection entered into force in 2023, but protection remains incomplete without national laws, enforcement and public awareness. Africans generate information through commerce, communication and work that could support stronger economies and valuable services. Yet participation should not require surrendering control over how that information gets used.
Building stronger African technological capability and enforcing fair rules around data use matters not just for privacy but for economic power. For savers and borrowers in Rwanda, what data companies hold about their behaviour and financial vulnerability will increasingly determine the credit, insurance and investment products available to them.