© 2010 Kevin Donovan and Jonathan Donner This is a prepublication draft of a paper to be presented at the 2nd International Conference on M4D - Mobile Communication Technology for Development, Kampala, Uganda. 10-11 November, 2010. http://m4d.humanit.org/ Changes and edits are likely. Please check for updates at www.jonathandonner.com or contact the authors before citing, quoting, redistributing or posting this version. Citation format: Donovan, Kevin., & Donner, Jonathan. (2010). A note on the availability (and importance) of pre-paid mobile data in Africa. In J. Svensson & G. Wicander (Eds.), 2nd International Conference on Mobile Communication Technology for Development (M4D2010) (pp. 263-267). Karlstad, Sweden: Karlstad University. www.jonathandonner.com/prepaydata_M4D.pdf A Note on the Availability (and Importance) of Pre-Paid Mobile Data in Africa Kevin DONOVAN 1 , Jonathan DONNER 2 1 Georgetown University, 37 th & O St. NW, Washington, DC, 20057, USA Tel: +1 (630) 849-8285, Email:kd228@georgetown.edu 2 Microsoft Research India, 196/36 2 nd Main, Sadashivnagar, Bangalore India 560080 Tel: +91 (80) 6658-6000, Email: jdonner@microsoft.com Abstract: We argue that clear and easy access to prepay data will be as essential to the widespread adoption and use of the mobile internet in developing countries as access to prepay airtime is/was to the adoption of the mobile telephone. In late 2009, we conducted a desk assessment of the availability of pre-pay (pay-as-you-go) data from major operators in 53 African countries. We identified at least one operator in 38 countries which offered pre-pay data, and in 3 cases we could determine that no prepay data was available. Information available from many operators was vague, incomplete, and hard to obtain, suggesting that a threshold of mainstream promotion of the service by operators may not yet have been crossed. We suggest topics for further research, both on the demand and supply sides of the prepaid data equation. Introduction The mobile internet is going global (Morgan Stanley Research, 2009). In the first decade of the 21 st century, most mobile Internet use was concentrated in Japan, South Korea, North America, and Europe. But another chapter in mobile internet adoption is beginning to unfold in the developing world (Boyera, 2007; Chigona, Beukes, Vally, & Tanner, 2009), particularly in China, where market researchers estimate that a hundred million people or more go online via their handsets (Elkin, 2010), and in South Africa, where mobile internet users are more prevalent than traditional PC-based internet users (Goldstuck, 2010). Of course, voice and SMS remain king in Africa, with mobile data (other than SMS) accounting for a low proportion of operator revenue. Given that many older and entry-level handsets are not data-enabled, most ICT4D research and practice also remains focused on voice and SMS; studies exploring mobile Internet use among resource-constrained