Our world of digital development is obsessed with internet coverage. A 2025 GSMA report says that network coverage in Africa is soon expected to surpass 90%.
Recently a technology expert asked me why rural Nigerian users would call into Viamo’s voice AI services when they could just access ChatGPT on their phone.
That’s when it hit me. What’s not being talked about is the user experience, digital confidence, and the agency to use a digital service for the first time.
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The real barrier is digital fluency
If you sit with farmers, health workers, beneficiaries, or mobile money users, you quickly see what the problem is.
- In Kenya, CHWs could read instructions but struggled with app navigation, multi-step workflows, and interpreting errors
- In Pakistan, users could read SMS but struggled with USSD menus, PIN resets, and agent interfaces.
- In Rwanda, research findings demonstrated limited capacity to access and use phone-based extension services, especially those requiring a smartphone
- In Uganda, low digital literacy was the primary driver of susceptibility to fraud.
This is not a literacy gap. This is a usability gap. And at its core, it is an agency gap.
First experience matters more than fast experience
Latency is the current buzzword and yes it matters. But for first-time or low-digital-literacy users, latency is almost never the real barrier.
If a first-time smartphone user is trying to reset their PIN or ask a farming question to a voice assistant, their biggest fear isn’t latency, it’s “What if I press the wrong button?” or “What if this doesn’t work and I look foolish?”
Latency affects speed. Usability affects confidence. And confidence is what determines whether the user ever tries again.
Closing the first time usage gap
The real barrier is whether they can successfully complete the journey at all.
What matters most is that the first experience is effortless, intuitive, and confidence-building. If the user succeeds once, they return. If they fail the first time, the tool is abandoned, regardless of speed.
Viamo piloted Ask Viamo Anything in Zambia, a voice-based Generative AI service that lets people in low-resource settings access trusted information simply by making a phone call.
Over 40,000 users have asked over 1 million questions and heard answers in real time. But what about the callers that never asked a question? Those are the ones we are now focusing on as we roll out the service across Africa.
We are seeing two things:
- There is a big drop off for first time users. In one project only 30% of first time callers were able to ask a question.
- When the first time usage barrier is overcome and trust built, some users in Zambia stayed on the call asking questions for over one hour!
A caller will forgive a two second delay. They will not forgive a design that makes them feel lost.
Latency matters once a user is comfortable.
The language barrier is deeper than translation
We often talk about “local language content” as if translating a service into Kiswahili, Hausa, Kinyarwanda, or Amharic automatically makes it usable. But the real language barrier is much deeper.
It is not just about vocabulary. It is about tone, pace, accent, idioms, and the cultural logic behind how people ask questions and interpret instructions.
A menu written or spoken in a local language can still feel foreign if it uses formal terms nobody uses in conversation, or if the voice speaks too fast, too flat, or with the wrong regional accent.
And it’s equally important that LLMs understand what people are asking. When a user in Zambia speaks about feeling an ‘empty chest’ they are talking about a respiratory condition. It doesn’t help if the LLM gives a response about depression.
This is why Viamo is working with both global and African partners to access the best African language models.
What real digital inclusion look like
Digital inclusion now depends on:
- First time success: If a user’s first experience is confusing, they are gone.
- Low cognitive load: Fewer steps. Less text. Familiar icons. Slower audio. Clearer language.
- The right channel: If you’re asking them to switch technology, you’re focusing on the wrong thing
- Local mental models: Design has to reflect how people think, not how engineers think.
- Trial and error safety: Users need to feel they can make a mistake without a penalty.
- Giving users control: Have users drive the discussion.
Usability is the new milestone
If we want AI, digital payments, digital health, e learning, and agricultural advisory to truly work for African audiences, we need to stop optimising for speed and start optimising for success.
Because a service that reaches 10 million people but is usable to only 10 percent of them is not a successful digital solution. It is a missed opportunity.
And one we can fix, if we build for the way people actually live, learn, speak, fear, trust, and decide.
By Sulakshana Gupta Lea-Howarth, Vice President, Partnerships, East and Southern Africa at Viamo
