Inhabited by almost 41-million residents, Kenya is one of Africa’s fastest growing countries in terms of telecommunications infrastructure. Together with South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, Kenya plays a critical role in driving innovation across the continent.
Kenya is a lot more proactive within the telecommunications industry than one would think, and from the stats available to us, it is clear that the country has a passion for implementing its information and telecommunications agenda:
* Kenya is Africa’s fourth largest country in terms of Internet users with a total of 10.5-million at the end of 2011. Nations ranked ahead of Kenya are Nigeria (45-milliion), Egypt (21.7-milliion) and Morocco (15.7-million). South Africa is positioned below Kenya with 6.8-million Internet users.
* The country has a population of just under 41-million and 10.4-million users connected to the Internet, which represents 25% of the population. Of those, 1.2-milliion citizens are on social media network Facebook.
* Kenya’s Internet usage has exploded in the last decade. In 2000 only 200 000 citizens had access to the Internet. The rapid growth can be attributed to lower bandwidth costs and the arrival of several undersea cables to the East African coast.
* Kenya has one fixed-line supplier, Telkom Kenya, which previously formed part of the Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation. France Telecom now holds 51% of Telkom Kenya’s shares.
* Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile network provider, had a subscriber base of approximately 12 million in 2010. Most of their subscribers are resident in major metropolitan areas such as Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru. The company has a net income of about £171-million.
* The average age of the 10.4-million users connected to the Internet ranges between 15-34 years old, while 21% fall into the 18-24 age bracket. Over 56% of the Internet users are college or university educated, and spend 70 minutes on the Internet per visit.
* The most popular searches and online activities in Kenya include entertainment; games and music; social networking and instant messaging; e-mails; general surfing; and job search.
* Kenya’s Country code (Top-level domain) is .KE. In 2002, the country also had eight television stations and eight FM radio stations.
* Kenya has the second most active Twitter user base in Africa, with 2.4-million users. South Africa has the highest number of Twitter users with over 5-million, while Nigeria only has 1.6-million, and Egypt 1.2-million.
* With eight television stations, Kenya is expected to move from analogue TV to digital broadcasting in 2013.
Sources: ITU, Internet World Stats, Wikipedia, Portland Communications
Charlie Fripp – Consumer tech editor
this is great….