One of the triumphs of the Information Revolution is the ability to connect countries, consumers, and businesses around the world. Africa, in particular, is moving into a new stage of connectedness. The 2Africa underwater fiber cable, the world’s largest subsea cable system, is scheduled to be completed in 2024, connecting 30 or so North African and Sub-Saharan African countries with Europe and Asia, and doubling data capacity.
At the same time, data consumption and smartphone penetration have soared. For example, in Nigeria, data consumption rose by 38% in 2023, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the new data capacity will be Africa’s “App Economy.” The rapidly growing number of smartphone users will be able to more easily use mobile applications to download information and entertainment both domestically and globally.
More important, for Africa, the evolving App Economy is a potent source of future well-paying jobs. The App Economy includes those workers engaged with developing, updating, maintaining, and securing mobile apps, as well as the workers supporting the app developers. As the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) has shown in previous research, the App Economy is booming in many countries at various stages of economic development.
Now it’s Africa’s turn. Nigeria already has 45,000 App Economy jobs, according to PPI’s new estimate (presented in this paper). Egypt, South Africa, and Morocco have 51,000, 15,000, and 9,000 App Economy jobs, respectively. Much more growth is possible with the right policies.
None of these jobs existed 15 years ago, when Apple first opened the App Store on July 10, 2008, in the middle of the global financial crisis. Android Market (which later became Google Play) was announced by Google shortly after. These app stores created a new route through which software developers in any country could write programs for smartphones. These mobile applications — called “apps” — could then be distributed to the rapidly growing number of smartphone users around the world.
The jobs generated by the app stores became an important part of the global economic expansion. Originally, apps were associated with games and social networks, but over the years, apps became critical to every area of the economy: Retail, travel, education, banking, health care, agriculture, and government.
More than that, app development and app stores became a key route by which young people can develop tech skills, either by building their own apps or helping develop apps for global markets. App development is a stepping-stone, if you will, to other aspects of the global digital economy.
In this pioneering paper, we estimate the number of App Economy jobs for two North Africa countries and two sub-Saharan countries where we have sufficient data to make reasonable estimates. We calculate the size of the iOS and Android ecosystems for these countries and compare them to peers adjusting for size. Finally, we also give some examples of App Economy jobs for these four countries, and touch on some policy implications for growth.
