eSIM for Africa

Twenty nine countries, and the exact list matters far more than the number. Several are ones nobody expects to see on an Africa plan. About a dozen of the continent's most visited destinations are not on it at all.

The full list: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, DR Congo, Egypt, Eswatini, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Réunion, Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia. Check your route against that before you read another word.

The surprises sit at both ends. Réunion is on the list, which is odd, because Réunion is legally part of France and sits in the Indian Ocean. Seychelles and Madagascar are on it too, so two island holidays are covered by an Africa plan. Central African Republic, Chad, Sudan and Guinea-Bissau are on it, which almost no consumer eSIM bothers with. Being listed is a coverage fact, not a travel recommendation, so read your government's advice for those four separately.

No to all four. Zimbabwe, Namibia, Rwanda and Ethiopia sit outside the coverage list, and so do Mozambique, Angola, Algeria, Cameroon, Mauritius, Benin, Togo and Sierra Leone. This is the question that decides most Africa trips, and almost no comparison page will answer it.

The gap that catches people hardest is Victoria Falls. Zambia is covered, so Livingstone works. Zimbabwe is not, so the moment you walk across the bridge to the Zimbabwean side you have no data. Same waterfall, two countries, one of them dark.

The same trap sits on other classic routes. Gorilla trekking in Uganda is covered, the Rwandan side at Volcanoes National Park is not. A self drive through Namibia is not covered anywhere. And a long layover in Addis Ababa gives you nothing at all, even though Ethiopia is one of the busiest connecting points on the continent.

The best rate on this plan works out at $5.88 per gigabyte. The entry price is $7.98, which is the highest starting price of any region we sell, and that cheapest plan is also the worst value per gigabyte of the three.

A "from" price is close to meaningless on its own. A cheap headline in one region and a cheap headline in another can hide completely different amounts of data. Cost per gigabyte is the only figure that compares honestly across regions, and on that measure only the Caribbean costs more. Judge the three plans against each other the same way and the largest one wins on rate every time.

The reason is wholesale. Providers buy access from local networks, and that access costs more where there are fewer towers, less fibre backhaul and less competition between operators. Every eSIM brand pays it, including the big brands who never mention it. Nobody has a secret cheap route into Africa. If a price looks far below this, check how many gigabytes you are actually being sold.

Routes that cross borders and stay inside the list. Three shapes work well: the East African safari circuit through Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, a North African run across Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, and West African business travel between Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Those three are where a single plan genuinely saves you effort. You cross a border and the same balance carries on working, with no second purchase and no second install. On a two country or three country itinerary that is worth real money and a lot less admin at every airport.

Outside those shapes the maths gets harder fast. A trip that mixes two covered countries with one uncovered country is not really a regional trip, it is two purchases pretending to be one. Map your route first, then count how many covered countries you will genuinely use data in. If the answer is one, you already know what to do.

A different network in each country, chosen by the plan rather than by you. In Kenya that is Safaricom, in Tanzania Vodacom, in Ghana AirtelTigo, in Nigeria Glo, in Morocco Maroc Telecom and Orange, in Tunisia Ooredoo, in Eswatini MTN, and on Réunion the French operator Free.

This matters more in Africa than anywhere else, because the networks are not equivalent. In Kenya, Safaricom is the one that actually reaches the Maasai Mara. Airtel has very little presence inside the reserve, so a cheaper local SIM on the wrong network can leave you with nothing exactly where you wanted a signal. In Tanzania, Vodacom leads for reach around the Serengeti and Ngorongoro.

Réunion landing on Free is a useful reminder of how uneven the list is. Réunion runs on French infrastructure, so it behaves like a European market rather than a continental one. It is the single place on this plan where the experience resembles nothing else you will use it for.

Expect three things, and none of them are the eSIM itself. Voice calls over apps are restricted in Egypt, mobile towers in South Africa lose power when the grid does, and coverage away from towns falls off far faster than any map suggests.

Egypt periodically restricts voice and video calling over apps at the carrier level. Messaging usually still works, the calls do not. That is network policy, not a fault with your plan, and it hits local SIM cards exactly the same way. Plan to type rather than call, or agree a backup app with whoever is waiting to hear from you.

In South Africa, towers run on batteries when the grid drops. Those batteries typically hold six to twelve hours and do not always recharge fully before the next outage, so signal can vanish in places the coverage map calls strong. The one thing that gets easier here is buying. A roaming eSIM skips local registration entirely, and in Tanzania that desk wants your passport, a photo and a fingerprint, and can take twenty to thirty minutes.

Buy the single country plan instead if you are only visiting one country. That is true almost every time, and it stays true even though the regional plan looks more impressive on paper. A country plan is priced against one market, so it usually hands you more data for less money. The Africa eSIM only earns its price when you genuinely cross borders and stay inside the covered list.

Two more cases where you should walk away. There is no unlimited option on this plan, none, at any price, so if you spend your day on video calls this is not the product for you. And if even one leg of your route sits outside the coverage list, you are buying a plan that goes dark on the day you most need it to work. This is the thinnest product in our range and we would rather you knew that before checkout than after.