A recent Facebook report shows that 7.3 million South Africans are daily active users (DAU) of the social media network. Followed by Nigeria with 7.1 million DAU’s, then Kenya with 2.2 million DAU’s. Also, the statistics showed, as expected, that major traffic on the social media network comes from mobile devices.
These statistics, coupled with the continent’s growing population and a possible revenue market ironically created by the high cost of data and low signal informed the company’s recent expansion into Africa, as they launched their first office in South Africa two months ago.
The company intends to work with local mobile phone companies like ‘internet.org’, where Facebook users can access to the site for free, as well as introduce other applications, such as Facebook Lite, that require a small amount of data to run.
For now, Facebook is focused on three African markets – Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa – because of their population and level of development. However, the social media company plans to expand business to other African countries overtime. Nicolas Mandelsohn, Vice President of Facebook Europe, stated that the company’s next billion users is coming from Africa, therefore Africa plays a significant role in the company’s growth.
For Nigeria, its global recognition for this year alone says it all. At the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity held in February 2015, Insight communications, Nigeria’s biggest marketing communications agency made the country proud by bagging the Press Lions National Diploma award.
Nigeria’s impact on technology worldwide and its knowledge of IT is visible through the amount of technological devices that are present in the country today.
