Worldwide, 81 per cent of urban dwellers use the Internet in 2023, compared with only 50 per cent of the population in rural areas. The urban-rural gap, measured as the ratio of the two percentages, has barely improved in recent years, from 1.7 in 2020 to 1.6 in 2023.
Unsurprisingly, the urban-rural gap is the smallest in regions with high penetration: the gap has been almost bridged in Europe. The ratio stands at 1.2 in both the Americas and the CIS regions, at 1.5 in the Asia-Pacific region and 1.6 in the Arab States region. In all these regions, progress has been modest since the start of the decade. In Africa, the gap remains wide: 57 per cent of urban dwellers use the Internet in 2023 compared with just 23 per cent of people in rural areas, reflecting a ratio of 2.5 (2.9 in 2020).
The gap between urban and rural areas varies significantly across income groups. The gap has almost been bridged in high-income countries (ratio of 1.1). In contrast, the divide remains deep in low-income countries: less than one in five people (17 per cent) living in rural areas in these countries use the Internet. People living in urban areas are nearly three times more likely to use the Internet. That shows that the digital divide across income groups is magnified in rural areas. The Internet use gap between urban areas of low-income and urban areas of high-income countries is 48 percentage points. The Internet use gap is 71 percentage points between the rural areas of the two groups.