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People of Africa do not enjoy the benefits of digital media because of the extremely low usage of internet in the continent. Despite being the second largest continent in the world, Africa has an internet penetration of only 4% of the world. The rest of the world takes the cake with 96%.
Isis Nyongó, the Development Manager for Google Kenya Business, recently said in a press statement that it is necessary to boost the internet penetration in Africa so as to increase the amount of benefits that are enjoyed by all the subscribers.
She told the press that there arose a need for a big investment for making internet affordable and accessible for the subscribers. This would go a long way to increase the number of subscribers. She also mentioned that Google was looking to increase the internet traffic in Africa by tendering products that were custom-made for the African market.
A recent survey revealed that there were close to 64 million internet users in the world which only covered about 7% of the total population of the world.
In a recent survey Egypt topped in a list for the maximum number of internet users. It has a total of 12.6 million users. Following Egypt were Nigeria, Morocco, Sudan, Algeria, and Kenya. Kenya was the highest in the Eastern Africa region. Nyongó credited the media for this accomplishment but mentioned that they still have a long way to go.
National Media group was mentioned as one of the leaders in the market in terms of internet usage in Kenya. The eastern countries are also known for using social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. According to a local blogger, the use of the internet for communication increased tenfold after a particularly violent post election phase after the 2007 elections.
