Facebook most accessed platform by mobile users in Kenya

Social media platform Facebook is the most accessed platform by Kenyan mobile users, a report by mobile web browser Opera Mini has revealed.

The State of the mobile web 2019 Africa report authored by the Norwegian company reveals that 40% of Opera user base in Kenya spent most of their time on the browser accessing Facebook in 2018.

Opera Mini’s report however did not reveal the numbers for the other social media platforms given that Twitter and Instagram are also extremely popular with Kenyans.

However, another report authored by digital agency dotsavvy published in 2015 listed Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Snapchat as the most popular social sites in the country respectively.

Further, according to Opera Mini’s report, social media 30%, search 24%, entertainment 24%, news 9%, sports 6%, knowledge 5%, other 3% are the most accessed platforms in the African market.

“Africa is a continent which is undertaking a rapid digital transformation. As Africans rapidly adopt smartphone devices, we see that mobile data cost still remains a challenge across Africa,” reads the report.

Conversely, the report also reveals the cost of data per gigabyte in Kenya (Ksh300)is ten times more than the cost of 1gb worth of data in India (Ksh30).

{Read: Report lays bare Kenyans’ insatiable attachment to porn, betting websites}

However Kenya is one of the African countries where data is cheap with a gigabyte of data in Benin going for Ksh2000, Mozambique (Ksh1600), South Africa (Ksh700), Somalia (Ksh600), Tanzania (Ksh600), Nigeria (Ksh200) and Ghana (Ksh150).

“Opera mobile browsers are also a gateway for people in Africa to access video content. In March 2019, statistics from Opera show that Tanzanians are more likely to access YouTube from their mobile browser than people in countries like Nigeria or Kenya,”

{See also: Media council: Radio, social media hot bed for fake news}

“In this period, 23% of the Opera Mini user base in Tanzania accessed the video platform, while in Nigeria and Kenya, only 17% of the user base accessed this platform.Entertainment 24%,”

The company has also announced that its 2017 USD 100 million investment is already yielding fruit.”We believe this has provided us with products better tailored for the market than our competition,” reads the report.