Only 33% Of Africa Is Online, 60% Of Nigerians Lack Internet, Just 10% Are Active On Social Media – Report

While Nigeria is often tagged as Africa’s largest market on the backs of its mammoth population which comfortably outstrips any other country on the continent, businesses/services that are looking to sell online may want to get a second look at things.

Here’s today’s mind-boggling statistic: 60 percent of Nigerians are still not connected to the internet and only about 10 percent are active on social media.

In other words, for a country with a population of around 200 million, less than half the number of people in the country are able to access the internet (85.49 million) and a paltry 27 million Nigerians are found to be active on social media.

This is according to the Digital 2020 Global Overview Report. The report provides, among other things, some insights into internet access and the global digital world.

Compiled by We Are Social and Hootsuite, the report also shows that digital, mobile, and social media have become a part of everyday life for people all over the world – including in Africa.

According to the report, 169.2 million Nigerians have mobile (phone) connections. This represents 83 percent penetration of the total population of 203.6 million people, of which 50 percent live in urban areas.

However, the report highlights that only 85.49 million Nigerians have internet access, some 42 percent of the total population. Additionally, only 27 million of those internet-enabled Nigerians have social media accounts that they run actively. Not exactly a damning statistic but a reality check all the same.

• More Than Half The Global Population Is Online

As highlighted in the report, global internet penetration has reached new heights as 298 million new members joined the online community in 2019. This means that 60 percent of the world is online.

Global internet access has hit 4.54 billion people, a 7 percent increase from January 2019.

Of the 3.2 billion people who make up 40 percent of the world’s population that is still unconnected to the internet, Asia accounts for the bulk of that number with 1 billion still not connected to the internet. Africa comes next, accounting for 27 percent of the total with 870 million unconnected to the internet.

• Facebook Is Still King, TikTok Is On Steroids

When it comes to social media, nobody seems able to topple Facebook. Facebook topped the charts yet again when it comes to active social media users.

The numbers suggest that the platform has already passed 2.5 billion monthly active users and user numbers continued to grow steadily in most countries in 2019.

But marketers can’t reach all of these users with Facebook ads, as the total addressable Facebook audience is about 1.95 billion. This means marketers can reach one-third of the world’s adults (18 and above), positioning Facebook as the best platform for online advertising, still.

In any case, TikTok seems like the biggest revelation of the past one year. The platform now has over 800 million monthly active users. though 500 million of these active users are in China, while just about 300 million are distributed among the rest of the world.

• Time Spent Online Is Equivalent To 100 Days A Year For The Average Internet User

Currently, the average internet user spends 6 hours and 43 minutes online each day – 3 minutes less than January 2019. Cumulatively, it is expected that users will most likely spend 100 days online this year.

This means in total, the world’s connected users will spend 1.25 billion years online in 2020, and more than one-third of that time will be spent using social and communications apps.

• Factors Like Age And Gender Still Affect Internet Population

Age and gender are still major determinants of who gets to be online. For instance, Africa has about 1.2 billion people. With 870 million without internet access, the continent only has about 400 million people connected to the internet. This is far less than 50 percent of the total number of people without internet access.

According to the report, one of the reasons for this is the fact that more than half the continent’s total population is below the age of 20.

Similarly, in Southern Asia where more than 460 million people are below the age of 13, this weighs in with a large fraction of the 1 billion people that don’t have internet access.

Gender also has a say in who gets to be online, the report finds. According to data from the ITU, women are more likely to be ‘unconnected’ than men.

As part of other findings, the Digital 2020 Global Overview Report finds that e-commerce is on the rise globally, even though it seems to be struggling in Africa. Gaming (offline and online) also had a good year.

Additionally, privacy concerns are slowly starting to creep in as the report has it that 64 percent of global internet users are worried about how companies use their data, an uptick from 63 percent in 2019.

Featured Image Courtesy: Al Jazeera