Product use and welfare: The case of mobile phones in Africa

•I ask whether mobile phone use in Africa offsets the inequality in mobile phone adoption.•A new and detailed data-set covering 11 African countries is used.•Mobile phone use does seem to offset the said inequality.

Traditional consumption theory assumes that the welfare from goods and technologies occurs at the point where they are purchased and hence that what matters from this point of view is the extent of adoption by society. But as Sen (1985) and others have pointed out, account also needs to be taken of the use to which technologies are put. (In the extreme case new technologies may not be used at all.) This paper asks in particular whether use of mobile phones is such as to offset or exacerbate the inequality in the adoption process. From what I can tell, there is some tendency for the former to occur, part of which can be explained but much remains to be understood. The paper uses recent survey data from a large and recent set that includes nationally representative information from 11 African countries.