The impact of mobile phone penetration on African inequality Available to Purchase

– The purpose of this paper is to complement theoretical and qualitative literature with empirical evidence on the income-redistributive effect of mobile phone penetration in 52 African countries.

– Robust ordinary least squares and two stage least squares empirical strategies are employed.

– The findings suggest that mobile penetration is pro-poor, as it has a positive income equality effect.

– “Mobile phone”-oriented poverty reduction channels are discussed.

– It deviates from mainstream country-specific and microeconomic survey-based approaches in the literature and provides the first macroeconomic assessment of the “mobile phone”-inequality nexus.