Two porn websites and three betting sites feature among the top 10 websites that Kenyans frequent, a new report by Nendo, a Kenyan digital growth consultancy firm shows, exposing a worrying trend where Kenyans are increasingly spending more of their time engaging in social evils at the expense of their own development.
Nendo’s report dubbed The State of Mobile Data 2019 shows that Google, Facebook, YouTube, Betin.Co.Ke, XVideos.Com, betPawa.Co.Ke, Sportpesa.Co.Ke, Xnxx.Com, Googleweblight.Com and Twitter are the most visited websites in the country.
The overlapping features among the top 10 websites are search, sport, social, stories and sex which the report describes as the 5 S’s of the Kenyan internet.
“Google commands 96% market share of searches in Kenya. Google is also the operator of the Android mobile operating system. Android is the “default” operating system of more than 98% of smartphones in Kenya eclipsing the more expensive Apple iPhone and niche Windows Phone devices,” reads the report.
Pornography
According to the report, adult sites rank higher in Kenya than the global average. The two most popular porn websites in Kenya rank at fifth and eighth respectively against the global average where the most popular porn sites across the world rank 10th, 11th, 13th and 15th.
“In comparison to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Ethiopia, no other East African country has more sports betting or adult websites in its top 10 list of websites,” reads the report.
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has been vocal in calling for porn sites to be blocked saying that consumption of pornographic material was the reason behind the unprecedented high number of teenage pregnancies among school-going children last year.
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“The girl child needs a lot of care because she is the most affected,” said the KNEC boss,” said Magoha during a function at the Kenya School of Government (KSG) in November last year “Getting pregnant when you are not ready is primitive. It shows that there is moral decadence in society, and that parents are negligent.”
Betting
Conversely, one third of the most popular websites Kenyans visit are sports betting websites.
The government has in the recent past slapped betting firms with different sets of taxes to make the enterprise expensive and has also banned betting adverts on Kenyan media effective May 30 this year.
Search
Nendo’s report lists YouTube as Kenya’s third most visited website in Kenya.
{See also: Survey: 52% of Kenyans rely on TV for news}
The world’s second largest search engine after Google is a popular destination for news, entertainment, sports, politics, current affairs, music and other topics.
YouTube experienced a spike in engagement and traffic during the January to February 2018 Media Shutdown of 3 leading Kenyan media houses. Royal Media Services’ Citizen TV, Nation Media Group’s NTV and Standard Media Group’s KTN, were put off-air for covering Raila Odinga’s mock swearing-in ceremony but continued to stream their news online through YouTube.
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