How Facebook is Catering to Africa, Where Cell Phones are the King

French Translation of the Week

Africa is a strong area of growth for Facebook.  But the American giant of social networking must adjust to the demand for intern access via mobile phones and compete with the emergence of more and more successful local media platforms.

L'Afrique est un formidable relais de croissance pour Facebook. Mais le géant américain des réseaux sociaux doit s'adapter à la demande d'accès à internet via les téléphones mobiles et faire face à la concurrence de plus en plus forte de nouvelles plateformes locales.

This article has been translated from French. Click here to read the original version on Jeune Afrique.

For ten years, Facebook has conquered the world of the internet.  In one simple click, its users can share their musical preferences, comment on the lives of their friends, and even flirt virtually.  On the African continent, people use it for the same purposes… with one minor difference.  "Africans don't necessarily have easy access to the internet; cybercafés are few and connectivity is limited," notes Naguib Toibiri, digital consultant for Red Blue Blur ideas (RBBi).

However, even though only about 10% of Africans have regular access to the internet, the rate of diffusion of cell phones, currently reaching about 40% of the continent, has the highest growth rate in the world (a 100% increase between 2008 and 2012, according to the advisory council PricewaterhouseCoopers).  According to the data provided by Informa Telecoms and Media, there have already been 735 million mobile subscriptions due to the widespread use of the dual SIM card.  This is a figure that could surpass one million by the end of 2015…

"The large mastodons of social networking understood that it was necessary to adapt to the continent," in order to obtain high profits from the mobile market, explains Naguib Toihiri.  In fact, since 2012, Google has proposed to Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana a service to send emails by SMS, while the team of Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, also decided to adjust his offer to the demand.

"Like" on SMS

In articles about the "like" button, it was found that the 54 million African Facebook users (source: Social Bakers) can still share their daily thoughts by sending text messages or accessing their sites translated into local languages, such as Swahili, Afrikaans, and Arabic.

This is an adaptation that has become indispensable for the web giant to consider: they must account for the arrival of rival African platforms.  "Facebook is no longer the best adapted social network," confirmed the consultant.  Africa still has the capacity to develop its own platforms.  Local community networks, such as Mxit, created in South Africa, the Kenyan network Ushahidi, or the Lithuanian network Eskimi (for which the number of African "fanclubs" just passed 100,000) compete against Facebook.  With 50 million users in 128 countries, Mxit claims to have even surpassed its American rival [Facebook] in certain countries like South Africa (10 million users as opposed to only 5.5 million).

The leader of the world as a whole, Facebook sees its market shares being cropped by the local alternatives which are attracting more and more people across the world.  In the face of competition, the social network must take Africans by surprise to reinforce their internet market via cell phones.  A battle which is far from being won, even when bearing the name Facebook.

Article translated by Allie Stauss, Staff Intern for the Africa Program at the Wilson Center.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay user Simon.