Globally, 85 per cent of urban dwellers use the Internet in 2025, compared to just over half of the rural population (58 per cent).
The urban-rural gap, measured as the ratio of the two percentages, has slowly decreased from 1.6 to 1.5 over the last four years. Unsurprisingly, the urban-rural gap is smallest in regions with high Internet use penetration, including in Europe, where the ratio is just 1.1, compared with 2.6 in Africa. In all regions, progress has been modest over the last four years.
In high-income countries, where 94 per cent of the population uses the Internet, the urban-rural gap has almost been bridged, with an average ratio of 1.1. In low-income countries, by contrast, the urban-rural gap remains wide with only one in seven rural dwellers (14 per cent) online, which is little more than one-third the share of urban residents.