Internet use in Kenya has been steadily growing, especially after the introduction of smartphones into the market. Combine the effect of having cheap smartphones and data bundles that offer lots of data for cheap and you have a recipe for people to use data a lot.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers Entertainment and Media Outlook report 2018-2022, they have estimated how much data Kenyans will use in the next four years.
Last year, Kenyans used 269 million gigabytes of data, which sounds like a lot but they estimate that this will rise to a massive 984 million gigabytes in 2022, an increase of 265.8%. That is not surprising since the population will increase and we will have more people with smartphones compared to now.
According to the Communications Authority of Kenya, Kenya has 46.6 million mobile subscribers of which 42.2 million use the Internet. PwC is estimating that households that are connected to broadband speeds below 10Mbps will drop from 95% seen in 2017 to 85% in 2022 as faster speeds take root.
PwC says that the popularity of social media networks and messaging apps and increased investment in infrastructure will support growth and drive data usage in the country. Kenya is home to over 7 million Facebook users, about 12 million WhatsApp users and 4 million Instagram users and this will grow over time.
Also in 2018, Kenyans spent $1.091 billion (Kshs 111 billion) on data bundles and PwC projects that this will rise to $1.872 billion (Kshs 190 billion) by 2022.
Internet advertising is also projected to grow in Kenya. $38 million (Kshs 3.86 billion) was spend in 2018 and this is projected to rise to $57 million (Kshs 5.79 billion) by 2022. Internet advertising pie by 2022 is projected to be shared as follows: Mobile (42.8%), Search (19.3%), Display (19.1%), Video (15.6%) and Classified at 3.2%.
