3 things to know about digital marketing in Africa

Internet penetration in Africa is lower than any other continent, at 18%. For this reason, Africa is often left out of the picture by international businesses working on their digital marketing strategy.

However, this continent is considered to be where China was ten years ago, and about to really take off digitally. Full of talent and ideas, Africa should not be ignored by forward-thinking international digital marketers.

Here are three things you need to know about digital marketing in Africa if you want to succeed in the continent.

1. The most digitally advanced nations

When it comes to internet usage, Nigeria leads the way with around 92 million of its 192 million-strong population being online. Egypt comes in second place, followed by Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria and Uganda. As a whole, the African continent has very low levels of internet penetration. Only around 27% of Africans are online, compared to 77% of Europeans and 88% of North Americans. However, figures show that this is changing, and the growth rate is extremely high compared to other continents.

2. The importance of mobile

The majority of African internet traffic originates from mobile devices, emphasising the importance of having a mobile-friendly website. For example, in Nigeria, 81% of traffic originated from mobile phones and only 16% originated from PCs in 2017. This is partly explained by the fact that mobile internet connections are cheaper and do not demand such complex infrastructures as PC connections do.

3. The most popular channels

Chat apps are big in Africa. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Viber are all commonly-used platforms which can give great exposure to your content in Africa. The most popular social channels are Facebook (with 75.8% of the market share) and YouTube (15.8%). From the point of view of search engines, Google has the monopoly with the biggest share of the African market (95.5%), followed by Yahoo (2.1%) and Bing (1.9%).

I hope this has given you a useful introduction to digital marketing in Africa. For more in-depth information, read our free guide below.

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Anna Giulia Novero

Publishing Editor at Webcertain

Anna Giulia has a strong academic background in literary studies, complemented by a Master’s degree in Translation, Writing, and Cultural Difference. She has extensive experience in writing, research, editing, proofreading, and translation. With a professional background in publishing, Anna Giulia currently works as Publishing Editor at Webcertain, commissioning writing projects for the Know-How platform and creating original content on a variety of international digital marketing subjects. Originally from Italy, Anna Giulia now lives in the UK.

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