Nigeria ranks top in Africa’s Internet access

source: Google.com

Ozioma Ubabukoh

With 63 million Internet users available in Nigeria, the country has been ranked number one in Africa and eight in the world in terms of Internet usage.

This is contained in the latest edition of digitalfacts, a publication produced by digitXplus.

China topped the list of 15 high Internet user countries with 632 million; followed by the United States of America (269 million), India (198 million), Japan (110 million), Brazil (105million), Russia (87million), Indonesia (83 milllion), and Germany (68 million).

 

Others are Nigeria (63 million); the United Kingdom (57 million); France (54 million); Mexico (52 million); Iran (49 million); Egypt (43 million) and South Korea (42 million).

The digital publication revealed that since 2011, Nigeria had maintained a steady upward trend in the number of Internet users.

It stated that from 35.7 million, the figure increased to 42.8 million; 51.8 million; 57.7 million and 63.2 in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Digitalfacts puts the total number of Internet users worldwide at 3.2 billion as of December 2015, representing an increase of 8.9 per cent over 2.9 billion Internet users recorded at the end of 2014.

Based on the regional statistics contained in the publication, Asia-Pacific had 1.6 billion Internet users as of December 2015; while North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Central/Eastern Europe and Middle East/Africa had 288 million, 325 million, 310 million, 238 million and 429 million, in that order.

The book further made public that the Nigerian telecoms sector, one of the largest in Africa, was driven almost completely by mobile telephony.

“Rapid expansion of the wireless networks and competition has driven down voice tariffs and made basic cellular services affordable, especially for the poorer rural consumers,” digitalfacts stated.

It also acknowledged that the relatively affluent urban middle class increasingly enjoyed 3G and 4G LTE services, adding that consumers faced issues pertaining to service quality and network congestion while religious extremism in the North of the country had affected infrastructure investments.

“The fixed-line network is weak and fixed-broadband penetration is very low in large parts of the country. The government has, however, come out with a National Broadband Plan, which aims to increase 3G and fixed-broadband coverage by 2018, helped by an expanding fibre-optic network.

“A proliferation of local online marketplaces and higher internet penetration in cities has resulted in strong growth in e-commerce transactions,” the book stated.

However, digitalfacts noted that the cloud-computing segment of the Nigeria’s economy offered immense potential, adding that e-government development lagged behind global peers and pay-TV penetration was extremely low in Nigeria.