Facebook has over 1.89 billion users around the world and it is undoubtedly the largest social network on Planet Earth. However, the spread of its users is not even (obviously) around the world and this is shown by a statistic Facebook shared yesterday.
Facebook moved its Johannesburg offices recently into new premises where it functions as support for advertisers, developers and other key partners.
“Since we first established a direct presence in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015, Facebook has grown from strength to strength,” Facebooks Regional Director for Africa, Nunu Ntshingila was quoted as saying. “We have enjoyed working closely with entrepreneurs, partners, developers and small businesses as they have used Facebook as a platform for growth. It’s inspiring for us to learn from the continent and to play a role in helping people and organizations connect with the world.”
With this announcement of Facebook changing premises in South Africa came an interesting statistic about how many Facebook users we have in Africa. Apparently, we have over 170 million monthly users in Africa of which 94% use it on mobile.
The number might seem staggering but this is less than 10% of the total active user base that Facebook boasts to have (170 million vs 1890 million). This means that if Facebook wants to have a higher user base, they have to focus on Africa to get those numbers.
Africa has a population of 1.2 billion people of which only 27.7% are Internet users, which is below the world average of 49.6% according to InternetStats. They have strategies to capture markets like Africa through their Free Basics program, beaming connectivity using satelittes and partnering in such projects like Surf Wifi that we have over here in Kenya. According to Facebook, Facebook user growth in Africa grew 42% since 2015 so this number will only become bigger over time, which is good news for the company.
