Despite the expansion of telecoms and internet companies into Africa and as more affordable smartphones encourage consumers to browse the internet in the continent, a new United Nations report shows that only 25.1% of Africans use the internet.
According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN agency that prepared the report, only one in 10 persons in several of Africa’s poorer and more fragile countries, is on the internet while those who are offline include females, elderly, less educated, as well as those who reside in the rural areas.
Unfortunately, Africa is nowhere near increasing its internet access because: “Internet penetration levels in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) today have reached the level enjoyed by developed countries in 1998, suggesting that the LDCs are lagging nearly 20 years behind the developed countries,” the report said.
