Overview Internet penetration for South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are represented through the figure below.

As we can see here internet penetration in all these countries is very low. However considering these are African countries, a penetration rate above 25% is equivalent to a penetration rate of 50% in Europe or North America.

Internet penetration in Kenya

1 2

Internet penetration in South Africa Internet penetration in Nigeria

1 2

1 2

While the internet penetration rate is low, Kenya and Nigeria still fall in the top 10 African countries in terms of internet penetration. The figure represents that list.

Even though we see Kenya and Nigeria at the 9th and 10th position respectively, we need to take into account the population of these countries to get a clearer picture. If Kenya and Nigeria are taken off the list, the remaining countries together account for only 30.7% of the African population. Kenya alone accounts for 28.9% of the total African population. The figure below represents the population of the countries with highest internet penetration and the comparison of this figure with the figure above will give us a clearer picture.

This is why it is important to access the African countries in terms of number of internet users rather than penetration of internet in the population. The figure below represents the top 5 countries in terms of internet users.

South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria all fall in the top 5 countries in terms of internet population and are therefore an important digital market in Africa.

Nigeria has made sound progress in terms of internet since 1999 when it came out of a military regime to an elected government system. The population of internet users has grown from a mere 200,000 in 2000 to 11 million in 2008 to almost 50 million people in 2012. One of the factors that have also helped Nigerian internet landscape is the mobile internet services and wireless services. The data services in Nigeria have gone cheaper. The average charge for 1 MB data is $ 1 compared to $7 in 2010. Mobile phone penetration is 58.6% out of which there were 7.3 million mobile internet users. Blackberry in particular is doing well in Nigeria and the number of Blackberry users is estimated to reach 500,000 in October 2011. Further growth is expected in the mobile internet landscape as 3G services grow strong in the area. Similar is the case in South Africa, where the number of internet users on mobile exceeds those who own a computer. There are 15.7 million mobile internet users compared to 6.4 million computer owners. The use of mobile phones had grown from 17% in 2000 to 76% in 2010. According to a 2011 report by Neilsonwire mobile phones usage has increased dramatically in South Africa. The figure below illustrates the importance of mobile in South Africa.

Nokia is the dominant player in South Africa accounting for more than half the handsets in the country. The major activities on mobile phones is shown through the figure given below.

Text messaging Download ringtones Go online 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Series1

As we can see here that text messaging and using social networks are the two major activities on mobile internet. The use of Facebook is what drives the use of social networks in mobile internet. Text messaging is used more than 4 times compared to the use of e-mails. The figure below represents the demographic profile of South African internet users.

The youngest group accounts for more than one third of the total internet users in South Africa. Internet users falling under the age group of 15-34 account for approximately three-fourths of the total internet population. As per South African Network Society (SANSS) female users account for 46% of the total internet users which shows that the gender gap is closing. While internet use is still considered expensive in South Africa, the number of users have nevertheless have doubled in the last four years. Overall, internet access in South Africa is low and a lot of work is required. According to a report by Statistics South Africa, more than 60% of the households has no access to internet. The figure below represents the findings the study in terms of internet access.

As we see here again, that only 8.6% of the people in South Africa have access to internet at home, while most access internet through their mobile phones (16.3%). In total only 35.2% have access to internet in South Africa.

Social Media Social media in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria is growing at a rapid pace. However, there are limitations to the growth such as limited internet availability, cost of using internet and similar others. Lack of infrastructure means that Social Media growth is constrained. Currently, 1.6 million Kenyans are using Facebook and Twitter. In 2011, over 2 million tweets were generated in Kenya which gets it adjacent to South Africa, the most active country on social media in the African continent. Despite these numbers, using social media in Kenya is seen as a luxury. Some of the obstacles are costs associated with Internet, unreliable electricity and inadequate access to internet access devices such as PC or smartphones. In fact, the costs associated with internet are so great for Kenyans that using the internet for approximately 30 minutes is almost equal to an average Kenyan feeding his family for a couple of days. The total cost of using the internet at a caf, creating an e-mail account and scanning/creating/uploading a photo on social networking sites such as Facebook costs somewhere around $ 0.72 which is enough to buy maize porridge to feed a family for a few days. Apart from the costs, travel is also a part of using internet to access social networking sites. Rural Kenya has hardly any place where internet can be accessed. This fact is further strengthened by the fact that almost all blogs, Facebook account or twitter account are based around Nairobi. Moreover the activist blogs which are present are mostly organizational and few individuals maintain a blog. Like most developing countries where internet infrastructure is less developed, its the mobiles that serve as the internet access devices. Kenya with a population of 40 has over 29 million mobile users. Add that to the fact that most of the Kenyans are under the age of 20, it gives you a young eager set of people who are open to experiment with technologies as they come. In fact, mobile has already started participating in the daily life of Kenyans. Kenyans use a mobile money transfer solution called M-PESA. This is supported by Safaricom and allows for making payments and receipt of payments among the users. There is no need for internet, or a third party application or even SMS. While Smartphones are not prevalent in Kenya,

There are indications that women, who are mostly the more active gender on social networks in most countries developed or developing, are underrepresented here. Having discussed the problems associated with social media in Kenya, one should not undermine the importance it has gained here. Social media is a new form of communication which has proven its benefits to Kenyans over the years. In a recent strike

by Doctors of Kenya for increasing their salary, they used social media as a platform to demonstrate and argue their case with the government. When the then present MPs used the opportunity to scam and create heavy pensions for themselves, Facebook and blogs served as the means for people to urge the President to take action. Demonstrations were organized through the help of Twitter. Social media helped resolve the situation with President rejecting the bill. This is not a standalone case by any means in Kenya. A village chief of Lanet, Kenya uses twitter and Facebook updates to update people with important information. He goes a step ahead by teaching people of the advantages of social networks. Overall, Kenyans may not have great access to internet and social media, but whatever access is available they are making full use of it. In the coming years with further growth in the infrastructure of internet and increase in use of smartphones, Kenya will be ready to join the social world. With the highest internet population in Africa, Nigeria also claims the right to boast of the most number of social media users. The use of social media has topped the use of emails according to a recent study done by Eskimi in Nigeria. The study which focused on use of e-mails revealed social media as the major source of communication with 41% of the survey respondents saying that social media was more important than e-mail. Chat messengers and SMS were also identified as an important form of communication claiming 38% of the respondents. Social media in Nigeria is almost synonymous with Facebook and Twitter. While internet infrastructure is still in its nascent phase in Nigeria, Nigerian social media users have turned to mobile to access the social networking sites. 87.2% of the Nigerian social media users use a mobile device to access Facebook, which makes it the second largest population accessing Facebook via mobile in the world. In twitter, it produced 1,646,212 tweets in a 3 month period, ranking third among countries on the African continent in terms of number of tweets generated. Overall, more than half of the Nigerian social media users access social networking sites via mobile. The infographic given below summarises the use and prevalence of social media in Nigeria.

Apart from Facebook, Google+ has also been making waves in the African continent, and in Nigeria. A recent study by PluDemographics revealed the age and gender demographics for Facebook and Google+ users in Nigeria. The figure below compares the demographics of both these platforms in Nigeria. As we can see here, Google+ is dominated mainly by male users with 84.7% of total users. Similarly in age groups, Google+ gets more than half of its users from the 18-24 age group. Facebook on the other hand has a more even spread of users in different age groups with 36% falling in the 18-24 age category and 35% falling in the 25-34 age category. These estimates could serve as a base for estimating the gender profile of social media users in Nigeria across all social networking sites.

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Series1 Series2

South Africa is another major country in the African continent when social media is concerned. The following infographic gives us an insight into social media habits of South African users.

The top 5 reasons to go online put social media as the second most popular activity on the internet after information search. Given below is a part of infographics made by Nielson Online, which gives is the most popular social networks accessed via mobile phones.

The age and gender demographics of the social media population of South Africa are displayed through the figure below.

5 4 3 2 1 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Series2 Series1

As we can see here, the social media penetration among South African internet users is approximately 86%. The penetration is high among young internet users falling in the age group 15-24 (92%) and 24-45 (92.5%). The penetration then decreases as we go up the age groups. With the exception of the youngest social media users, where the penetration among male users (99%) is higher than female users (85%), social media penetration is higher among female internet users (84% in male users vs. 88% in female users). The figure below gives us the time spent on social networks by people from different age groups.

5 4 3 2 1 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 Series1

As is generally seen, the youngest social media users i.e. age group 15-24 (2.7 hours) spend considerably more time on social networks than others. However, it is noteworthy that time spent on social networks does not gradually decrease as we go up in the age categories, but rather it fluctuates. Time spent decreases as we move from age group 2534 (1.9 hours) to the age group 35-44 (1.7 hours), but then rises again to 2 hours in the

age group 45-54. In fact the age group 35-44 represents the least time spent on social networks. This is in line with the numbers which we have seen earlier when comparing users of Facebook with Google+. Both these networks have the age group 35-44 contributing the least number of their users (10%). The major social networking sites in South Africa in terms of number of unique visitors are given in the figure below.

5 4 3 2 1 1,000,000 2,000,000 3,000,000 4,000,000 5,000,000 Series1

Facebook leading the social networking sites is something we have observed in most countries. Similar is the case here in South Africa, where Facebook has more than 4 million unique visitors and the second most popular social networking site LinkedIn has less than a million unique visitors. Twitter comes in third with almost half a million users, though that may change quickly. Twitter has been recognized as an important source of communication, not just with friends but also with public institutions. In the following figure where time spent on the top 5 social networking sites is represented, we have not considered Facebook because the time spent on Facebook dwarfs the time spent on other social networking sites. So a better picture is formed when the remaining social networking sites in South Africa are analyzed without Facebook. As we can see here, that while MySpace ranks 4th in the list of top social networking sites, the time spent on MySpace is far less than any other site (0.9 minutes). Considering MySpace hasnt been growing in any country that we have observed so far, it will be safe to conclude that the only reason MySpace makes that list is due to it being a very old player in the social networking market, though it s most probably declining at this stage.
4 3 Series1 2 1 0 2 4 6 8 10

Facebook Facebook is the dominant platform in Africa. The following table gives us a summary of Facebooks performance in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.
Country South Africa Nigeria Kenya Total Number of users 5515460 5308560 2018560 % penetration among internet users 89.44% 11.77% 19.24% World Rank in Facebook 33 36 66

The following figures represent the growth curve of Facebook in terms of number of users in the period from May 2012 to May 2013.

Facebook growth in South Africa

Facebook growth in Nigeria

Facebook growth in Kenya

What we can observe from here is that Facebook grew smoothly in 2012 with slight decline in the last quarter. Although it made up for the last quarter, the numbers of users have since declined in South Africa and Nigeria in 2013. Kenya also showed some decline but not as prominent as South Africa or Nigeria and has already picked up post march 2013. In South Africa and Nigeria also the decline has slowed down after March 2013 and it is relatively stable in April 2013. Below are the age demographics of Facebook users in South Africa and Kenya. As we can see here that the younger users form the bulk of Facebook users. The younger group accounts for the majority of Facebook users slightly more in case of Kenya than South Africa. Nevertheless the age distribution clearly marks the dominance of young Kenyans and South Africans on Facebook.

Nigeria also has shown tremendous growth in Facebook. The figure below displays the growth of Facebook in Nigeria over the years.

Nigeria ranked as the 15th fastest growing country on Facebook in August 2011. According to InternetWorldStats, it ranked 2nd in terms of number of users in Africa, second only to Egypt. Twitter South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are the most active African country on Twitter as per a report by Portland group. They created 5,030,226, 2,476,800 and 1,646,212 tweets respectively in a span of 3 months in the fourth quarter of 2011. South Africa is the most active twitter country in the African continent. It generated almost double the number of tweets than second placed Kenya. This is possibly because twitter is more Smartphone based social networking site and South Africans have a better Smartphone usage rate than Nigeria or Kenya. It is estimated that 20% of South Africans now own a Smartphone. 33% of mobile users access the internet and 21% of the users in age group 18-29 own a Smartphone. 57%of the tweets generated came from cell phones. Most of the users of Twitter (60%) in South Africa are in their 20s and major use of twitter is for conversing with friends. Twitter in Nigeria is not as widespread as South Africa. It is possibly because of low social media awareness. Almost all twitter users in Nigeria are Facebook users but that is not the case other way around. Most twitter users are not first time social media users. People generally start using Facebook and then once awareness increases they move to twitter. However it has been observed in Nigeria that once a user moves to twitter, the attachment towards Facebook decreases. Many twitter users describe Facebook as boring or dull. Twitter is mostly seen as an information source. It is also used in conjunction with Facebook to mobilize and organize demonstrations such as the one during the fuel subsidy case. Another use of twitter is to seek employment. Job seekers actively look for employment opportunities on twitter.

Social Media Monitoring Social media monitoring tools for Africa are still underdeveloped. Although there are agencies which provide such services, the services are still limited and few in number. However, since most users use global social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and similar, international tools aimed at these platforms which can provide language support can suffice the major requirements. Some of the social media monitoring tools are African Laughter: This Kenyan company also provides a social media monitoring tool called the Repute Daily Report. This tool will enable users to monitor social media and social media comments on any clients that are in the database. It creates a detailed report of the social media activity. Some of the things that will be taken into account are sentiment analysis positive to negative ratio, alerts informing the brand or client to any news headline as well as Facebook and Twitter monitoring. It also reports a Facebook to Twitter ratio. Brands Eye: Brands Eye provides language support and can be used to monitor all platforms across Africa. Sysomos: Sysomos is another social media company which provides monitoring tools such as Heartbeat. This is one of the better social media monitoring tools present in the market. Tips for Social Media Monitoring African social media landscape is still underdeveloped in terms of infrastructure. However, the use of social media as an information and connection platform is as active as most countries. In order to make good use of social media in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, the following should be kept under consideration. Similar to most developing countries African internet infrastructure still lags behind other nations. Therefore mobile internet may play a more important role as it would penetrate faster than the broadband connections. Kenyans have demonstrated their ease of use of mobile applications with use of MPAISA. This further enhances the importance of mobile in Africa. As soon as the smartphone market gets bigger, social networking sites which are more mobile friendly will be the first to gain attention. A particularly useful trend to consider is that the users which start using twitter look at Facebook as a daily mailbox. Even though numbers would suggest almost all users of twitter are on Facebook, once African users move to twitter attention towards Facebook declines.

Twitter serves as an important information platform in Africa for disseminating important news across people. It is also used as a medium to organize demonstrations and other activities in Africa. Even though Facebook is the largest social networking site in Africa, using it costs in rural Africa. This means that time spent on Facebook is much less than what it could potentially be once the internet infrastructure is improved on. One good thing that comes to social markers from the current user demographics is that the users are young and belong to the upper class of the African society. So campaigns for brands on social networking sites especially Facebook will attract a lot of attention from the right demographics.

References
The missing links on Kenya's social Media http://www.cio.co.ke/blog/the-missing-links-on-kenya's-social-media The essential social media for Kenyan journalists http://networkednews.org/?p=34 Facebook is a Luxury: Social Media Use in Rural Kenya http://crowdresearch.org/blog/?p=4563 Mobile Phones, Internet and Social Media Use in Kenya http://futurechallenges.org/local/mobile-phones-internet-and-social-mediause-in-kenya/ How Social Media Adoption is Growing in Kenya http://blog.brightwavemarketing.com/2012/05/how-social-media-adoption-isgrowing-in-kenya/ Kenya and Mobile Payments http://blog.brightwavemarketing.com/2012/05/kenya-and-mobile/ Nigeria - Mobile Market - Overview, Statistics and Forecasts http://www.budde.com.au/Research/Nigeria-Mobile-Market-OverviewStatistics-and-Forecasts.html Younger Consumers Account for Three-Quarters of South Africa's Internet Users http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Younger-ConsumersAccount-Three-Quarters-of-South-Africas-Internet-Users/1009690 Mobile Phones Dominate in South Africa http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2011/mobile-phones-dominate-insouth-africa.html

South Africas internet penetration poor http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-technology-news/south-africasinternet-penetration-poor--census Communications Commission of Kenya http://www.cck.go.ke/resc/downloads/Sector_statistics_for_Quarter_2_-_20122013.pdf Social media use exceeds emails in Nigeria, Eskimi says http://www.technologytimesng.com/social-media-use-exceeds-emails-innigeria-eskimi-says/ Nigeria: Facebook Users Grew Nine Times More Than Google Plus in Past Six Months http://techloy.com/2012/01/31/facebook-vs-googleplusnigeria/ Recent Report shows Over 5 Million Twitter Users In South Africa http://www.2oceansvibe.com/2013/03/07/recent-report-shows-over-5-milliontwitter-users-in-south-africa/ Facebook, Twitter Growth Driven By Smartphones In South Africa [STUDY] http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/south-africa-socialmedia_b27585 SA Twitter Report 2010 Analysis and Demographics Of South African Twitter Usage http://www.fuseware.net/wpcontent/uploads/2010/04/SA-Twitter-Report-2010.pdf