In the 1990s, Africa was the global underdog when it came to technological innovations. The developed world was already experiencing a mobile boom. It had matured much faster there than in the developing world. Things now though are very different. The world, you can say, has changed.

Today, Africa has more than 450 million subscribers, boosting a mobile market larger than the US, and it continues to grow faster than any other region in the world.

The social networks

Africans use their mobiles to connect to social media. Internet services like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter allow people to communicate directly with each other and have taken Africa - even rural Africa - by storm.

Rural Africa is joining what many deem the next global trend, a shift to mobile internet use, with social media as its main driver. An influential internet analyst Mary Meeker says that mobile internet and social media are the fastest growing areas of the technology industry worldwide, but more so in Africa. Meeker predicts wireless communication to soon overtake computers as the primary internet device.

Indeed, Africa is pushing both developments.

Studies show that Africans - both in urban and rural areas - are spending more time on social media sites. In the past three months, Facebook, the largest social media platform in the globe site, was the most visited site in Africa. The network has more than 17 million users, up from just 10 million in 2009. More than 15 percent of people online in Africa are currently on the platform, compared to just 11 percent in Asia.

Constraints and opportunities

Africa’s embrace of social media is even more striking, given the low number of Africans using the internet and the many hurdles they face trying to go online.

Africa’s 100 million internet users in both the rural and urban areas make the continent the region in the world with the lowest penetration rate and a tiny minority of the two billion people online around the world.

Among many reasons for the poor showing is the scarcity and prohibitive costs of high-speed internet connections and the limited number of personal computers in use.

But these challenges simultaneously contribute to the growth in the use of mobile internet, which in the recent years has been the highest in the world.

- 03 February 2011, by Ntokozo Khumalo

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Source: www.africanbusinessreview.co.za/blogs/editor/social-media-transforms-communication-rural-africa (Access: 03.02.2011)