[BLOG] Social Media: Our world in Africa
There is no way one can have a conversation that doesn’t touch on the world of social media. Now Africa is experiencing more and cheaper bandwidth, combined with cheaper and increasingly versatile mobile devices have been inextricably linked to a universe of highly-functional and user-friendly platforms.
We have been catapulted into a new, digital dimension. It’s a bit like how Alice felt in “Alice in Wonderland”. However, this is no fairy tale. It’s real! People’s lives are changing – for the better, companies are adapting to this
digital dimension with more enthusiasm than fear and there is a tangible economic stimulus and business impact.
The period since mobile penetration figures became significant has been characterised by innovation and technology-driven value added services that are increasingly specifically tailored to meet the spending and consumption needs of African consumers.
For example, Kenyan-based Safaricom’s M-PESA has, through it’s mobile money transfer product, tapped into the “unbanked” portion of the population by taking advantage of the country’s high mobile penetration levels.
Around half of the world’s 2 billion Internet users have used some form of social media according to latest data. Africa has seen a 2357% growth in internet usage between 2000 and 2010 and Asia represents around 42% of the total internet population worldwide.
For the vast majority of Africans, social and other digital communications media are a daily part of life. One in four African
is a “heavy” social media user, meaning they use at least two different types of social media each and every day.
Many more Africans report a positive impact of social media use on their emotional well-being than a negative one. Most of them don’t think their use of social media affects their social and emotional well-being one way or the other.
But there are some who think that using social media does affect how they feel about themselves and their social situation.
Social media is taking Africa by storm with mobile phone subscriptions, internet and social media usage figures on the climb. Facebook is leading the way with high user numbers and Twitter is catching up with the most significant social networking recorded in the first half of 2011.
Some exciting figures show that there are presently about 120-million internet users and 32-million Facebook users in Africa. This is quite high when compared to only 18% of internet users in Asia are on Facebook.
Are we going there yet?
www.africabusinesscommunities.com
