Somalia's largest operator, Hormuud Telecom, has already built a wide-reaching 4G network across the country — but much of the population cannot use it because smartphones remain prohibitively expensive for them to buy.

That mismatch between network supply and device affordability sits at the centre of a growing debate over how connectivity gaps in emerging markets actually get closed. In Somalia the issue is, by the operator's own account, particularly acute.

What is the real barrier to connectivity in Somalia?

The conventional diagnosis of Africa's connectivity gap tends to focus on coverage: towers, backhaul, spectrum and rural roll-out economics. Somalia presents a different profile. Hormuud, the market leader, has deployed a 4G network with broad reach. The radio infrastructure, in other words, is largely in place.

The constraint has shifted to the customer end of the chain. Handsets — specifically smartphones — cost more than a large share of Somali households can afford upfront. Without a smartphone, subscribers cannot access the mobile broadband that Hormuud's 4G network already delivers.

This matters for how operators, regulators and development financiers prioritise investment. Building more coverage in a market where the network already runs ahead of device ownership delivers limited incremental connectivity. Financing the devices themselves may deliver more.

Why does device financing matter so much here?

Device financing — spreading the cost of a smartphone over time, typically bundled with airtime or data — is the mechanism being framed as the key that unlocks internet access in Somalia. The logic is straightforward:

• The network exists and reaches widely.
• The service it carries is mobile broadband.
• The missing element is the terminal device.
• Upfront smartphone prices exclude much of the population.
• instalment-based payment models convert an unaffordable one-off purchase into a manageable recurring one.

In effect, the affordability problem moves from the handset counter to the billing system. Operators such as Hormuud, which already run prepaid airtime relationships with their subscribers, are structurally positioned to extend credit against those relationships.

The stakes are commercial as well as social. Every subscriber who cannot afford a smartphone is a subscriber who cannot be upsold from basic voice and SMS to data services. For a market-leading operator, device financing is not charity; it is demand creation for a 4G network whose capacity is waiting for terminals to fill it.

How does Somalia compare with the wider African picture?

Somalia is not alone. Many markets worldwide — and particularly in Africa — face a connectivity gap of some form. What distinguishes Somalia is how sharp the gap between network availability and usable access has become.

In most emerging-market stories, the sequence runs the other way: operators chase coverage first and monetisation later. Hormuud's position inverts that. The wide-reaching 4G network came first; the subscriber base able to exploit it is still catching up.

That inversion changes the policy conversation. Where coverage is the binding constraint, the levers are infrastructure sharing, universal service funds and spectrum pricing. Where device affordability is the binding constraint, the levers are handset financing schemes, import duties on devices and partnerships between operators, handset makers and micro-lenders.

What happens next?

The direction of travel is clear from the framing of the debate itself: device financing is being positioned as the key enabler of internet access in Somalia. If Hormuud and its peers can put smartphones within financial reach of the population that already lives under 4G coverage, the country's connectivity statistics could improve faster than any additional network build would allow. The pace of that improvement will depend on how quickly affordable financing models scale across the operator's subscriber base.