Sovereignty, Resilience and Trust: Strengthening Europe’s Digital Economy After covid-19

Figure 6. Overall income driven by mobile technology in 2019, by region 
Source: GSMA Intelligence
Turning to income growth, mobile technology has 
driven the largest improvements in Sub-Saharan Africa 
and Latin America. From 2000 to 2019, the income per 
capita of these regions improved by almost a quarter, 
in total.15 Over the same period, mobile adoption grew 
strongly, with penetration starting at low levels and 
increasing by 80–100 percentage points by 2019. As a 
result, we estimate that mobile technology accounted 
for around 21% of the gains in income per capita in 
Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America ($100 and $400 
respectively). MENA also experienced substantial 
improvements in income per capita due to mobile 
technology (13% of the income per capita improvement 
in the region, or $200).
15. 
From 2000 to 2019, income per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa increased from approximately $1,150 to $1,600 (an increase of $450). Income per capita in Latin America increased 
from around $7,000 to $9,000 (an increase of $2,000).

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15
Mobile technology and economic growth
2. Economic impacts from existing deployments of 2G, 3G and 4G
Asia
Pacific
Sub-Saharan
Africa
Latin
America
CIS
MENA
Europe
North
America
21%
($100)
21%
($400)
13%
($200)
11%
($1,200)
10%
($350)
8%
($550)
6%
($250)
21% (or $100) 
of income per 
capita growth 
from 2000 to 
2019
Rest of income per capita growth
Income per capita growth attributable to mobile technology
Figure 7. Income per capita growth, accumulated since 2000, by region
Source: GSMA Intelligence
Advanced economies in North America and Europe, 
where adoption had already begun accelerating before 
2000, still saw mobile technology adoption drive 8–11% 
of income per capita growth. In fact, these two regions 
experienced the largest growth in income per capita 
in absolute terms – mobile technology generated 
an increase of $1,200 of income per capita in North 
America and $550 in Europe.
In the case of Asia Pacific, we estimate that the 
adoption of mobile technology drove 6% of income 
growth, which equates to an improvement of $250 in 
income per capita of the region. Although there was 
strong growth in mobile technology adoption in Asia 
Pacific, the gains from mobile technology have less 
weight on overall income growth because of China’s 
strong economic growth.
Income per capita has been calculated considering the entire world, or a given country classification, as a single unit (e.g. income divided by 
population of the world or the country category).

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Appendix: SDG drivers