Six out of every ten adults without a mobile phone in Kenya are women, the latest mobile gender gap report by GSMA shows.
According to the survey, 39 out of every 100 adults who have not used the internet on a mobile phone in the last three months are also women.
Affordability, low literacy levels and skills, safety and security, and relevance were the main reasons for the gender gap.
Majority of the non-mobile owners come from rural areas and the slums. Most of them are unemployed, illiterate or semi-illiterate and over the age of 45.
The findings further reveal mobile and mobile internet gender gap causes Kenya’s GDP to fall short of Sh200,000 for every non-mobile owner annually.
Kenya is fourth among African countries losing out from the economic benefits of its citizens owning a mobile phone.
South Africa leads in the ranking, as its GDP falls short of an estimated Sh600,000 per every non-mobile owner.
It is followed closely by Algeria at Sh400,000 and Nigeria at Sh220,000. Closer home, Tanzania loses about Sh80,000 per every non-mobile or mobile internet user.
Mozambique has the lowest level of mobile penetration of all markets surveyed at 52 per cent, and the third largest mobile ownership gender gap at 24 per cent.
Data by the Communications Authority shows there were 46.6 million mobile subscribers as at September 2018. Three in every four subscribers had at least two SIM cards.
While the report doesn’t contain the total number of non-mobile users, it shows at least 86 million women in sub-Saharan Africa do not own a mobile phone. In addition, about 200 million women in the region have no access to the internet.
Across low middle income countries globally, 15 per cent of adults still do not own a mobile phone and 45 per cent do not use mobile internet.
In the same countries, 313 million fewer women than men use mobile internet, representing a gender gap of 23 per cent, while 197 million fewer women own a mobile phone, an equivalent of 10 per cent gender gap.
Last year, the Kenya Integrated Budget Household Survey by KNBS reported that seven in every ten households in Kenya had no internet connectivity.
Lack of need to use internet was the most predominant reason for lack of connectivity reported by 30.1 per cent of those who did not use it.