Mobile Internet Penetration In Africa Increases By 155.59 Percent In Two Years

VENTURES AFRICA-  Africa is one of the highest regions with mobile Internet penetration; the percentage of  internet users that go online with a mobile device (when compared to computer access) in Africa is increasing at the rapidly- “84 million mobile handsets are already capable of using the Internet, 7 out of 10 are expected to be Internet-enabled by 2014.”
According to a recent report by Pingdom, a site-monitoring firm, the percentage of mobile usage in Africa soared from 5.81% in 2010 to 14.85% in 2012. The report, which was analysed from a data collation from StatCounter, revealed that the total increase of mobile usage to access the web increased by 155.59 % from 2010 to 2012. The data for 2012 covers the first seven days of May 2012, buttressing the prediction that mobile web traffic may overtake web traffic from computers.

Presently, six African countries – Zambia (47.09%), Sudan (44.95%), Nigeria (40.65%), Zimbabwe (37.95%), Ethiopia (31.79%) and Kenya(29.2%) are among the global top players in the countries with the highest share of mobile traffic.

Africa has the highest share among the top ranking nations beating Asia, which has only four countries present on the top ten lists with India as number one.

Zambia has the second highest percentage in the world. Other countries presented on the top ten lists include Uzbekistan (42.36%), Laos (35.46%) and Brunei (34.66%).

In most countries, half of the web traffic comes from mobile devices. Mobile data accounts for 10 percent of Internet usage and Europe is still far behind Africa. The first European country is the United Kingdom with 10.71%, and the U.S. showed 8.61% mobile web traffic as share of all web traffic.

“But with the mobile share only increasing from 1.81 per cent to 5.13 per cent, Europe is still far behind both Africa and Asia when it comes to the percentage of users accessing the web using mobiles,” noted Pingdom, in its report.

Worldwide, mobiles only account for about 10% of web access, but it’s a figure that is growing fast. With some countries already accounting for 50% of web traffic coming from mobiles. It is safe to assume this development will only continue, Pingdom added.