Less than a third of sub-Saharan Africans own mobile phones – the lowest penetration in the world – compared to four out of five mobile owners in developed markets, according to a NewsCentralMedia report in TechCentral.

“This means we’ve just scratched the surface,” said Peter Lyons, public policy director for GSMA in Africa and the Middle East, an association of mobile operators and related companies.

“To have a meaningful long-term impact, we have to get to the next two-thirds, especially by targeting women,” Lyons said. “Women’s use of mobile devices will be key to having a long-term effect.”

The mobile market is changing so rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa that “the next 100 million to 200 million unique subscribers will be much more difficult to reach (and) industry and government are going to have to think a bit outside the box. Business as usual isn’t necessarily going to work,” Lyons said.

Mobile penetration, measured by the number of active Sims in use in sub-Saharan Africa, reached 61 percent of the population, the report said, but in reality fewer than one in three people in the region actually owns a mobile phone.

About 253 million people in the region have Sim cards but there are 502 million active Sims, according to Lyons.

The big gap between unique subscribers and total number of active Sims can be attributed partly to users moving between networks seeking special offers and promotions offered by  mobile operators.

“Multiple Sim ownership is very common, especially in cities,” Lyons says.

According to the GSMA, women in the region are 23 percent less likely to have a mobile phone than men. Women are 43 percent less likely than men to have access to the Internet.

Affordability is another reason mobile penetration rates remain low in sub-Saharan Africa,  TechCentral reports.  In some markets like Ethiopia — where mobile is dominated by a state-owned monopoly — coverage is lacking outside the urban areas, contributing to the problem.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, average revenue per user is equivalent to 30 percent of average consumer income. In South Africa, it’s 4 percent, while Kenya is at 18 percent and Nigeria is at 16 percent, according to Lyons. “To get the sweet spot where more developed markets are, you have to be around 1 percent.”

The affordability of mobile phones is also a problem in Africa.

“Smartphone penetration in South Africa is about 18 percent, which is 1 percent higher than the global average, but across sub-Saharan Africa — including South Africa — it’s 4 percent,” Lyons said. “By 2017, we expect 45 percent smartphone penetration for South Africa versus about 20 percent for sub-Saharan Africa.”

Despite low penetration of mobile phones, mobile already contributes more than 6 percent of gross domestic product in sub-Saharan Africa, higher than any other comparable region globally, according to the GSMA. This number is forecast to increase above 8 percent of regional gross domestic product by 2020.