How Opera bridges digital divide in Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa is a key focus for Opera and we believe there is significant growth ahead. The region is the fastest growing continent in terms of internet penetration. Recent reports from GSMA show that only 300m of the total 1.1bn people are connected to the internet in Sub Saharan Africa, which means less than one-third in are online.

By 2025, it is expected that 678m people in the region will be connected to the internet. This continued surge in internet penetration will be driven by key fundamental factors.

The United Nations reports that 60 per cent of the region’s population is aged under 25, a demographic which will shapes the future of Africa and will come online at a record pace.

Carriers are transforming and accelerating the investment into infrastructure and 4G roll-out, making data cheaper for consumers.

GSMA reports that smartphone adoption is growing rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa reaching 50 per cent of total connection in 2020. This is due to the availability of more affordable smartphones and popular smartphone financing models.

 

Africa first

Looking at these fundamental factors, we believe Africa has a bright future, which is why Opera has adopted its ‘Africa First’ strategy. This means that our mobile products and services are developed first and foremost with the African consumer in mind. This means we invest in the region to bring more people online and offer them the fastest and most reliable internet connection. This means we partner with local, regional and global leading companies to ensure we bring the best online experience to our users. This means we employ brilliant African colleagues across key cities like Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Cape Town who fill key functions such as business and product development, marketing, operations and editorial reps, to name a few.

Opera News was launched under the Africa First strategy two years ago. Today, it is the leading news and content app in Africa, with 25m monthly active users as of the third quarter of this year, while the Opera News AI service is used by nearly 80m consumers every month in the region. Opera News Hub was launched in Nigeria last year, and the platform publishes more than 10,000 news articles daily in Africa. Another great example of a product incubated by our Africa First strategy is Olist, our classifieds business in Nigeria launched in August 2019. Today, Olist is the second biggest classifieds business in the country, with approximately six million monthly active users.

This year, in Nigeria, we launched Opera For Business, in partnership with Google My Business, to help local businesses come online and be discoverable by anyone at any time from any mobile device. Our vision is to provide every Nigerian business owner with better and more affordable ways to promote their businesses online, so that anyone connected to the internet can find them.

We believe that access to the internet should be a universal right, though less than one in three people have access to the internet in Sub-Saharan Africa. In my home country, Norway, which has a Gross Domestic Product per capita of $81,697 (2018 World Bank), one gigabyte of data costs $5.28. In South Africa, it costs $4.30, but the GDP per capita is $6,374. The difference is stark. Because of these fundamental challenges seen across Africa, we’re proud and humbled that Opera and Opera Mini are often considered synonymous with the internet. Every time I’m in Lagos, Nairobi or Jo’burg, it’s inspiring to hear that nine out of 10 people know Opera. Ask anyone on the streets in Ikeja and they all know Opera Mini. I wish we had such brand awareness in Oslo!

More than 380m people around the world choose our products every month, with 150m based in Africa. People choose our products because we provide faster, safer and more affordable ways of getting online. For example, our small and powerful Opera Mini browser, with more than 500m installations from Google Play, is among the most popular apps in the world because it provides users with up to 90 per cent data savings. Thanks to our unique data compression technology.

 

Free browsing for nearly 40m people

Among the key initiatives tied to our Africa First strategy this year are the partnerships we have formed with the leading telcos across Sub-Saharan Africa to provide people with free browsing in the Opera Mini browser. In the first quarter of this year, we partnered with MTN and Airtel in Nigeria, followed by MTN Zambia. In the second quarter, we expanded our partnerships with the telcos in Ghana; MTN, AirtelTigo and Vodafone. In August, we replicated our success with Safaricom in Kenya, among the leading telcos on the continent, soon followed by Airtel Kenya. More recently, we were excited to announce our partnership with MTN South Africa.

Through these 10 partnerships, Opera has provided nearly 40m people with up to 1.5GB of free browsing every month across five African countries.

We’ve done this because we know that the cost of mobile data is the biggest barrier for people getting online in Africa. As we approach a new year, we expect to combine our strong presence on the market, and our high brand awareness, with our unique technology, to offer even more people affordable ways of getting online.

 

User base hit 150m in Q3

 In Q3 2020, the Opera user base in Africa showed a strong 18 per cent growth year-on-year across all our products, reaching a combined user base of 150m monthly active users. We see significant growth in our apps like Opera Mini and Opera News, and we’re confident that our growth will continue next year.

We believe that developing better browsers and news apps that offer great features and personalised content has been key to Opera’s continued growth across Africa in 2020. We have optimised our apps to solve everyday’s challenges. For example, we added a news channel dedicated to the Coronavirus Disease, where people could find reliable information using Opera Mini and Opera News, and stay informed about the situation in their countries. Opera News Hub has become the leading publisher of local African content with approximately 10,000 articles self-published every day.

We are continuing to optimise our products to offer our loyal users more reasons to use Opera. Users across many African countries can download and stream music in our Free Music channel while sharing the same content using our own file sharing feature. Also, we made it easier for users to monitor their data usage via the Data Savings module on the home page. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements

As we wrap up 2020, I look forward to coming back to Africa soon and spending more time with our users, partners and colleagues.

*Arnesen is Executive Vice President of Mobile Browsers at Opera

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