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I know it's not really relevant to the meat of the article, but I can't trust any of the numbers listed in the article. They claim that "Just 28 per cent of pe

I know it's not really relevant to the meat of the article, but I can't trust any of the numbers listed in the article. They claim that "Just 28 per cent of people living in Africa are internet users and two-thirds of those are located in South Africa." If we take the population estimates of just 4 countries: Nigeria (206 million), Ethiopia (109 million), South Africa (60 million), and Kenya (47 million) we get 422 million people. 28% of that is 118 million, and 2/3 of that is 79 million. Clearly South Africa can't have 79 million internet users if they only have a population of about 60 million.

dmix 6y ago
Found a source Google cited for the 28% figure in this [1] article. Not claiming it's accurate since they only source their own "ITU estimates". I also don't see a mention of "South Africa" in the stats: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/FactsFigures2019.pdf https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/Fact... The same PDF mentions "3G coverage in Africa at 79.5 percent". So I guess that is not being counted as internet. Must be broadband? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/world/africa/google-loon-balloon-kenya.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/world/africa/google-loon-...
- sgt 6y ago
  Perhaps it is an estimate of Internet users using a conventional computer. I am pretty certain that the figure must be higher than 28% these days as pretty much everyone has a smart phone, even poor people in the slums of Kenya. There are however still quite a few feature phones out there though, often with keypads nearly worn down to the circuit board!
londons_explore 6y ago
Perhaps they meant "Sub Saharan Africa" rather than "South Africa"?