Kenya ranks second after South Africa in Internet access

Kenya is now ranked the second behind South Africa in terms of the size of population having access to the Internet, a new study by an American think-tank shows.

Four out of every 10 Kenyan adults use the Internet at least daily, behind South Africa where 42 per cent of the adult populace has access to the web, according to findings by Pew Research Centre.

The Washington DC-based researcher says a quarter or 26 per cent of Kenya’s adult population owns a smartphone or other digital devices such as computer tablets to be placed third on the continent behind South Africa (37 per cent) and Nigeria’s 28 per cent score.

“In a number of emerging and developing countries, more people have access to the Internet and are also using it more frequently,” Pew said in a newly-published report.

“There has been a noticeable rise over the past two years in the percentage of people in the emerging and developing nations who say that they use the Internet and own a smartphone,” the think-tank said.

Pew Research conducted the study in 40 countries across the globe using telephone and face-to-face interviews carried out last year.

But the research says there is a widening gender gap in terms of access to the Internet, with men more likely to own a smartphone than women.

“There are gender gaps on many aspects of technology use. These differences are especially stark in African nations,” says the Pew findings.

The digital gender gap in Kenya is at 12 percentage points on smartphone ownership as Pew reports that 32 per cent of women own smart devices while only a fifth of adult women possess Internet-enabled phones.

Some of the most popular smartphones mentioned by respondents in Kenya include iPhone, BlackBerry, Huawei, Ideos and Samsung.

Gender gaps

This gap further widens to 18 percentage points in terms of Internet access given that 49 per cent of adult men go online compared to 31 per cent for women.

The gender gaps also appear on basic mobile phone ownership in many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Pew said.

Kenya’s high Internet access is attributed to availability of low value data packages and low-cost smartphones, especially from Asian device manufacturers.

For example, Safaricom’s has a daily tariff plan which offers customers seven megabytes of data for Sh5, and comes with seven text messages.

The number of smartphones in Safaricom’s network has grown more than eightfold to 3.4 million as at March 2015 from just over 400,000 in 2012.

Airtel has a Sh20 daily tariff dubbed ‘UnlimiNet’ offering subscribers 20MB of data, eight minutes of calls and 20 SMSs across all networks. The telco said it has signed up more than one million subscribers to this offering.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp emerged as favourites for those going online, with 82 per cent of Kenyan adults visiting these sites, Pew Research said.