Internet Penetration in Nigeria Rises to 53%

Obinna Chima

Internet penetration in Nigeria has increased to 53 per cent, which is the highest in Africa. Also, mobile subscription in the country has increased to 81 per cent, similar to Africa’s, according to a report.

Jumia Nigeria stated this in the 2017 edition of its African Mobile Trends Paper. This was the third white paper presentation from Jumia delving into mobile trends across Africa and specifically Nigeria. The study took a look at the how the market had democratised mobile internet use, the consumer behaviours driving increased smartphone adoption and the role of mobile brands, mobile operators and m-commerce in creating a synergy of an enhanced customer experience.

This year’s Mobile Africa Study was carried out in 15 African countries which generate more than 80 per cent of Africa’s GDP – Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Mozambique, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroun, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Senegal.

It showed that there are 960 million mobile subscriptions across Africa – an 80 per cent penetration rate among the continent’s population. Internet penetration is at 18 per cent with 216 million internet users.

According to the report, about 71 per cent of website visitors on Jumia use their mobile phones. This was in comparison to 53 per cent of Jumia African customers. One of the main vehicles of this mobile trajectory was the increasing adoption of the smartphone device by consumers.

“As predicted in our 2016 report, smartphone adoption continues to rise in Nigeria. The mobile phone category continues to be the most popular among Nigerian shoppers on Jumia, both in terms of the number of items sold, and in terms of revenue generated. The sales of smartphones jumped up by 394% between 2014 and 2016, mostly driven by an increasing range of smartphones price points.

“The average price for a smartphone on Jumia is $117, down from $216 in 2014. Correlating with this is a drop in the share of sales of basic feature phones from 6% in 2015 to 4% in 2016, even as the share of smartphones on the website increased.

“In 2016 Chinese mobile brands held dominance and played a major role in introducing smartphones with lower price points. Infinix, Innjoo, Tecno, Samsung and Yezz are the top 5 smartphone brands in terms of sales on Jumia. Infinix continues to be Africa’s top smartphone brand across Jumia’s 15 markets. One of their entry level smartphones, the Infinix Hot4Lite was one of the best-selling phones across several African markets including Nigeria,” it added.

The report also states that increased access and affordability of low specification smartphones also revealed the need for the mobile ecosystem to respond with data-efficient browsers and mobile apps that are optimised for performance and an easy user experience.

“Looking at the mobile internet browsers customers use to access Jumia, 50 per cent of customers in Africa come onto Jumia’s mobile site with Google Chrome. In Nigeria that number is just 28 per cent. Instead, the Opera mini browser is much more popular, with 41 per cent of the mobile traffic to Jumia Nigeria coming from Opera mini.”