Pan-African website AfriTree.com quotes a report written by by social media giant Facebook who says while connectivity to the internet creates massive advantages: like greater economic opportunities, easier access to education, better access to healthcare and increased empowerment for women, the majority of unconnected people, including millions in Africa, are not even aware of the internet.
It’s only one of the disconcerting findings made by Facebook in its second ‘State of Connectivity’ study. The social innovators undertook the study to gather an understanding of how large the gap is between communities with internet access (connected communities) and those without (unconnected communities). They also try to find solutions to bridging the so-called ‘digital divide’, which is particularly wide in Africa.
A series of surveys in 11 countries (including 42,000 people aged 15 to 64) found that the majority of unconnected people either did not know what the internet is, or have heard the word but do not know anything else about it.
In Nigeria, for example, 75% of the unconnected had not heard of the word “internet”. Even among people who have heard of the internet, levels of understanding are often very low. Of those who live in rural areas, 70% are less likely to be connected (compared to urban dwellers) with the majority being women.
Facebook says there are four key barriers to internet connectivity:
Availability: Proximity of the necessary infrastructure required for access.
Affordability: The cost of access relative to income.
Relevance: A reason for access, such as primary language content.
Readiness: The capacity to access, including skills, awareness and cultural acceptance.
While most users use mobile access for the internet in Africa, it’s restricted as a result of low mobile coverage, high data cost, low quality of data speeds and problems with electrical supply. Those in rural areas are less aware (if even at all) of the benefits of the internet and will find adop tion to the internet harder as time without it increases. In Nigeria, for instance, with its large rural areas, it will cost up to three times more to set up mobile network architecture than in other countries.
Existing evidence also suggests that there is a large gender gap in use of digital technology: stark inequalities between men and women in parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are correlated with women being less likely than men to own a mobile phone (14% less likely in developing markets as a whole, but 50–60% less likely in India and 10–40% less likely in sub-Saharan Africa).
Overall the state of connectivity has improved if statistics from the 2014 State of Connectivity Report is compared to the 2015 report. It found that:
At the end of 2014, there were 2.9 billion internet users globally. By the end of 2015, this figure was predicted to have reached 3.2 billion – 43% of the world’s population;
During 2014, lower prices for data and rising global incomes have made mobile data packages of 500MB per month affordable to 500 million more people;
The highest estimates of 3G and 4G coverage suggest that 1.6 billion people live outside mobile broadband coverage, an improvement compared to 2 billion at the end of 2014; and
Most people connect to the internet with mobile devices, which is the only way to get online in many parts of the world. Yet an estimated 2.7 billion people did not have mobile phone subscriptions in 2015.
Facebook says it is deeply committed to finding a path to connect everyone in the world and more must be done to address the challenges that remain. The developed world is largely online, but the developing world is a long way behind. Urban areas are connected, many rural areas are not. The less money you have, the less likely you are to be online.
In many countries, women use the internet far less than men. And even if the entire world lived within range of the necessary infrastructure, nearly a billion people remain illiterate or otherwise unable to benefit from online content.
“By working together to improve the availability of data and design data-driven solutions, the broad community of public- and private-sector organisations committed to improving connectivity can make great progress in breaking down the barriers to connecting the next 4 billion people,” the reports reads.
