By Juliet Gillies
This is a two-part article. Here, we take a broad look at internet connectivity in Africa, as at
December 2020, while we’re waiting for the next annual data to be published (as at end 2021).
(Note: all data used was taken from the annual WeAreSocial / Hootsuite report, which pulls in data from various sources, including the UN and country-specific government authorities.). In the second part, we will zoom in on social media (SM) use.
The map shows the five regions (Northern, Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa) and the: total population in millions; internet use as a percentage of the population; year-on-year (YoY) growth in internet use; number of people (in millions) in the population not yet connected to the internet.
Eastern Africa boasts the largest population, followed by Western African, Northern Africa and Central Africa, with Southern Africa last. However, the percentage internet use is in the following order: Southern Africa – 62%; Northern Africa – 56%; Western Africa – 42%; Central Africa – 26%; Eastern Africa – 24%.
For comparison purposes, the internet figures are highest in Northern Europe (96%) and Northern America (90%). The Caribbean equals Southern Africa (62%), while Central Asia is similar to Northern Africa (57% and 56%, respectively). Southern Asia equals Western Africa (42% each), while Central Africa and Eastern Africa are the lowest in the world. The graph shows the differences clearly, but I have included only the top 5 regions, the 5 African regions plus the worldwide average, for comparison purposes. Only Southern Africa was above the world average (59.5%).
All this means there are vast numbers of people on the continent who are still to connect to the
internet and still to engage with SM – some 42% of the total African population or 569m people!
While this is happening over the next 15 years or so, as the very young grow into teenagers and
young adults, as connectivity grows apace, and as GDP grows, so many more millions will be added to the continent’s population, with the rate of growth worldwide holding steady in the +1.0% – 1.1% range for the last 6 years. So another 135 million or so to be born in Africa per year using the current population figures.
Internet adoption rates by individual countries vary widely, with Morocco in the lead (74.4%),
followed by South Africa (64%), Egypt (57.3%), Ghana (50%), Nigeria (50%) and Kenya (40%). At
the bottom are: Liberia (14.9%), Niger (13.6%), Burundi (13.3%), Somalia 12.1%), CAR (11.4%)
Comoros (8.5%), South Sudan (8%) and Eritrea (6.9%).
For comparison purposes, the top five countries in the world were: UAE (99%); Denmark (98.1%); Sweden (98%); South Korea (97%) and Switzerland (97%). This tells us that all countries in Africa, still have room for growth, but the young population in Africa compared to some other regions in the world also needs to be considered, as does GDP per capital and the geographic size and urbanisation in the regions compared to many other regions in the world.
The biggest YoY growth in internet adoption rate on the continent in 2020 was in Central Africa,
closely followed by Western Africa, then Eastern Africa and Northern Africa, with the lowest growth in Southern Africa. This makes sense, as the adoption rate is already relatively high in Southern Africa (62%) and it has a young population, so internet user growth will have to come as the youngest generation grows into the 13+ age group.
Conversely, internet user figures are low in Central Africa (26%) and Eastern Africa (24%), so there are still many hundreds of millions of people now in the 13+ age group who are yet to connect. With the annual average GDP for Africa averaging 3.7% – 4.6% between 2000 and 2019*, this will happen fast; and it is worth noting that the YoY growth in internet users was much higher on the continent than elsewhere in the world. The graph shows this clearly, but it includes only the previously selected areas for comparison purposes, and other regions not included grew faster, e.g. Eastern Asia (8.4%), Southern Asia (9.1%) and South-Eastern Asia (96%). But none beat the top three in Africa.
In the next part of this article, we will look at SM engagement on the continent – where it’s at and
where it’s going.
* ODI, https://odi.org/en/events/africas-economic-growth-in-a-new-global-context/
