The pitfalls in Kenya’s high internet penetration

Kenya’s high Internet usage does not necessarily mean the country is the best placed in Africa to capitalise on the Internet, a Nation Newsplex analysis shows.

With seven out of 10 Kenyans using the Internet, the country has the best penetration in Africa according to data monitored by the aggregation website InternetWorldStats.org.

On the surface, this 70 per cent penetration rate places Kenya at par with Russia and ahead of high and middle-income countries such as Italy (62 per cent), Portugal (68), Greece (63), Turkey (60), Vatican City (57), China (52) and Poland (68).

Fixed broadband is far better than mobile broadband for applications which are vital for growing an innovation economy

The reality, however, is that many of these countries boast better Internet speeds than Kenya does, and given their larger populations, have opened up Internet access to far more people in absolute terms.

Kenya has 0.2 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people, which is far behind 12 for Turkey, 18 for Russia and 24 for Italy, according to 2014 World Bank figures. Kenya is also far from the best in Africa, ranking at 28th. Africa also lags behind the rest of the world in its use of fixed broadband Internet, provided by fibre optic cables. 

This is important because fixed broadband is far better than mobile broadband for applications which are vital for growing an innovation economy such as streaming, video conferencing, cloud computing and large file downloads.

READ: WALUBENGO: Why isn't Internet in Kenya affordable?

In Kenya, there were about 111,130 fixed wired broadband connections to homes and offices in 2015, according to the latest Economic Survey. In 2014, according to the International Telecommunications Union, the cost of fixed broadband in Kenya was 35.3 per cent of Gross National Income per capita, while it was only two per cent in South Africa, highlighting a significant difference in affordability.

Only Africa and Asia have their share of Internet users being lower than their share of the world population

While 31.8 million new users accessed the Internet in Kenya from 2000 to June of 2016, 92.5 million people accessed the Internet in Nigeria. Yet both countries had 200,000 users in the year 2,000.

Over the same time, China has added 698 million Internet users. Both these countries have significantly larger populations and economies than Kenya.

SIM CARDS

The Economic Survey 2016 and the Communication Commission of Kenya credit the huge growth in Internet use on affordable mobile phones in the market, cheaper Internet bundles offered by mobile operators, and improved connectivity from fibre optic cables.

Kenyans on the Internet have increased 159 times, from 200,000 in the year 2000 to about 32 million in June 2016.

One also needs to be clear on whether penetration rate refers to the number of mobile phone users or the number of connections (i.e.) SIM cards, as GMSA has cautioned. One person may own two or more connections, which may not give a true picture of mobile penetration.

Kenya’s mobile penetration, at 87 per cent, is impressive in Africa, but it is dwarfed by developed countries, where the rate routinely exceeds 100 per cent.

According to the latest Economic Survey, data speed for computer modems and transmission carriers increased by nearly 67 per cent to 20,293 bits per second per person, owing to the accessibility of fibre optic.

Internet subscriptions increased 46 per cent from 16.4 million in 2014 to 23.9 million in 2015, while the number of licensed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) increased from 177 in 2014 to 221 in 2015.

In Africa, Kenya is followed by Morocco and Mauritius with 60 per cent internet penetration, and Seychelles with 54 per cent. Senegal rounds off the top five with 50 per cent, according to World Stats.

Twelve African countries have less than five per cent of their population accessing the Internet. One quarter of all Africa’s Internet users lives in Nigeria, while a tenth lives in each of Kenya and Egypt. In fact, 62 per cent of all the Internet users live in just five countries.

BEST PENETRATION

The best Internet penetration tends to be in smaller countries. Antarctica, a continent with about 2,700 people, has the best Internet penetration in the world — 100 per cent, followed by the Falkland Islands with 99 per cent and a population of 2,800, and Iceland 98 per cent and a population of 329,100.

People living in North America, Europe and Australia or Oceania are three times as likely as those living in Kenya to use the Internet, while those living in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Middle East are twice as likely.

Of the seven world regions, only Africa and Asia have their share of Internet users being lower than the share of the world population. Although Africa makes up 16 per cent of the world population, they constitute 9 per cent of Internet users, while Asia, with 55 per cent of the world’s population, has half of all users.

In contrast, North America with about five per cent of the world’s population has nine per cent of Internet users, almost double its share of the world population. Europe that has 11 per cent of the world’s population has 17 per cent of Internet users.

Although Africa is lagging behind other regions, in the past six years, Internet use on the continent has increased 70-fold, the most for any region. It is followed by the Middle East where use has increased almost 40-fold, Latin America and the Caribbean (20-fold), Asia (15-fold), Europe (fourfold), and Oceania/Australia and North America (twofold).

Today about four billion people around the world, or almost half of the world’s population, use the internet, and 339 million of them live in Africa. This translates to about one in three Africans.

One out of five Internet users in the world, and two out of five users in Asia, live in China. Two in five online Europeans are Russian, and two in five Internet users in the Americas are from the United States. Four out of five Internet users in Oceania are Australians while two in five online Middle Easterns are Iranian.

THIRD IN AFRICA

Five million Kenyans, who amount to 16 per cent of online Kenyans, or 11 per cent the country’s population, use Facebook, according to WorldStats. Part of the increased Facebook access has been facilitated by FreeBasics, a service by Facebook service that allows free access to Facebook and Wikipedia, among other platforms

FreeBasics has been accused of violating neutrality by favouring particular websites, in response to which Facebook has allowed any platform to be involved, subject to meeting certain technical requirements.

Kenya is third among African countries with the smallest share of Internet users with Facebook accounts. The other countries are South Sudan with eight per cent, Zimbabwe with 13 per cent and Uganda with 15 per cent. 

There are 55 countries where 100 per cent of online users have Facebook accounts, according to Internet World Stats. They include the African countries of Algeria, Botswana, Eritrea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Lesotho, Libya, Western Sahara, Somalia, Madagascar and Sierra Leone.