LONDON — From Google’s Loon to Facbeook’s drones, the internet that Silicon Valley’s giants will create in Africa will be quite different to the one back home. With many first-time consumers adopting mobile devices before desktop, Africa may be a vision of the west’s media future.
“The rate at which the mobile phone has grown in Nigeria is from 1999, which was zero, to 2014, where we have close to 130 million mobile phones,” says Kazeem Durodoye, group executive director in charge of digital strategy at the country’s Leadership Newspapers Group. “You probably find millions and millions of people with a mobile phone but without a computer.”
For Leadership, whose own website has jumped up national internet rankings in the last couple of years, two thirds of visitors already come from mobile – a higher proportion than many western peers.
But the inadequacy of internet infrastructure still means video is a non-prospect for now – at least, until Facebook and Google swoop over the skies of Abuja, Durodoye says.
Beet.TV spoke with him at the FT Digital Media Conference. To view all our coverage of the conference, please visit this page.
