How Accurate Is The African Internet World Stats?
While I’m still shocked at the sudden increase in Egypt’s Internet usage, which has surpassed that of Nigeria, I’m also skeptical of the recent statistics from the Internet World Stats. From the recent statistics, Egypt has overtaken Nigeria in Internet usage as at December 2008.
The new stats shows Egypt on top with 10.5 million internet users, while Nigeria slipped to No. 2 position, but maintained the internet user base of 10 million, which it has held for the last one year. On the other hand, Morrocco is still 3rd, but slipped from 7.3million in June 2008 to 6.6 million internet users in December 2008. And South Africa maintains their 4th position, but slipped from 5.1 million in June 2008 to 4.6 million in December 2008.
I’m not sure why Nigeria’s internet user base did not increase or decrease, like the rest of the other countries, which somehow questions the accuracy of the statistics.
Are we to believe that between June and December 2008, Nigeria’s internet usage was static? Or should I say stagnant?
Update I: There are 10, 000, 000 Internet users as of Mar/08. Where are the figures for December 2008?
Update II: Here, there are 10, 532, 400 Internet users as of Dec/08.
What are your thoughts?
Image Via: Internet World Stats
i feel accurate gathering of data for the nigerian marketplace hasnt been done properly.
Most of the statstical figures are dependent on secondary data which isnt an accurate measure for analysis.
Over the past 6 months, i am certain that Nigeria has witnessed a significant rise in internet usage which is as a result of our transit into the e-economy.
I beleive its just a matter of time before we get an indigenous online research body capable of providing accurate data for the world stats organisation.
Yomi - You’re speaking my mind. I still can’t understand why those figures didn’t move in 6 months. It’s unbelievable!
Loy, I see your point. But, I want to play devil’s advocate, so humor (not crucify) me. What is happening on the ground in Nigeria that would have or should have caused an expansion of numbers other than just the passage of time? I mean, what one or two acts/effects that would increase our internet usership. Remember, I am not questioning your thinking and analysis, I’m pushing to understand the basis for your reasoning.
Here is why I ask the question. I wonder if the financial situation, and by that I mean the real financial situation (not the CBN’s preachings) in Nigeria might be having an impact (consciously or subconsciously) on how Nigerians spend their money. Are Nigerians going out there to buy hardware and broadband/internet service in the same numbers? Also, how does the continued interruption to electricity supply affect internet usage in a country like Nigeria? Honestly, it is a possibility that those statistics could be off just as you have pointed out, but I am asking you and your readers who may know, whether events on the ground can change usership so rapidly. Maybe the global crunch could help explain the Nigerian numbers and even the declining numbers for Morocco, S.A. as well.
And as for Egypt, didn’t they suffer an internet outage in December? The cables were cut. I take it that had little effect, but i can tell you that the fact that Egypt doesn’t have the same power problems Nigeria has can definitely play a role in affecting those statistics. Anyway, I’m just trying to provide a more complex approach to looking at these numbers and determining whether they make sense or not.
Solomonsydelle - You have a point there. But, let me ask: Have you been following Google Insights for Search? If you check, you’ll see that there were more people on the internet searching for ‘jamb’, ‘etisalat’ ‘obama’, ‘facebook’ etc from Nigeria over the last 12 months.
So how come that didn’t affect the figures?
@ Loy: Unfortunately, I have not been tracking these search terms. But, I will trust you on that. Nevertheless, could the issue then be that we do not know what metrics are being used to gather the statistics? And, could it be that even though there were more ’searches’ there weren’t more people searching as a percentage? That is the thing with numbers, like you know, they are easily manipulated.
I have been to that site a few times and only now realized that there was no obvious contact button/form, as I wanted to send them a message pointing them to this discussion. The problem in this situation, as was the case with the recent UN report on maternal and child death in Nigeria, is that Nigeria (government/private sector) does not keep track of these figure itself or does not provide that information. This shouldn’t even be a problem for us. We should be able to go to a website, pull the stats and compare them to those reported by IWS. But, alas…
I think you should send IWS this post and ask for some clarification on how exactly they collect information on Nigeria. It would be interesting to say the least.
Solomon - I thought about sending them, but decided against it. If they are a web analytics/statistics company, they should know who’s talking about them.
My hope is that somehow, someone from Miniwatts Marketing Group would come clarify things here.
Google Insights does not necessarily indicate absolute search volume nor number of people searching. It better reflects popularity e.g if the user base is declining and searches remain flat. The trend will be upward.
Also me-thinks ” I thought about sending them, but decided against it. If they are a web analytics/statistics company, they should know who’s talking about them.” - should be re-considered.
In the grand scheme of things, we need more of the attention on the Nigeria internet scene than they do. What do they lose by not having this debate? - 2kobo
@ Loy: If you have contact info, you must send this link to them. It will definitely get their attention and they will more than likely respond. Besides, it could create a networking opportunity that you never would have imagined.
Just send them the link with a one liner, you’ll be surprised…
Off to catch up.