According to a new study that was conducted by Norwegian software firm; Opera and digital reading non-profit WorldReader – found out that women in Africa are using mobile internet heavily more than the men do.
According to reports by IT News Africa, Opera ran a survey on 1,500 women and men aged between 14 to 44 years in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya in May 2017 to learn more about their web browsing habits on their mobile phones. The poll results were later combined with WorldReader insights on the mobile reading habits of 50,000 WorldReader app users in the three countries above.
The combined study revealed that women in these three African countries are as tech savvy as men when it comes to browsing the internet using their mobile phones.
The study showed that women are using their browsers as often as men, with the majority of female survey respondents in Kenya and Nigeria at a 60% frequency rate stating that they access their mobile browsers more than eight times a day to do various internet activities.
Data Purchase
Nearly half of female respondents in Kenya said that they spend over KSHS 1,000 (roughly USD$10) to buy mobile data plan while only a third of the male respondents are doing so. Similarly, in Nigeria, around 70% of women stated that they spend over NGN 1,000 (roughly USD$3) to buy a mobile data plan in comparison to 60% of men paying the same amount. Women also lead when it comes to buying big data packages with five times more women buying data 10GB data bundles in Kenya than men.[related-posts]
Entertainment and self-development
Women in the three surveyed African countries are predominately browsing the internet to relax and entertain themselves. By browsing lifestyle, music and entertainment content on Opera and by reading romance, thrillers and other fiction e-books on WorldReader (in some cases up to 10 times as many as men).
Online content
According to Opera, women are more engaged than men with content that can improve their lives, including content related to education, economy, property rights, public services, and health. In all three countries a higher percentage of women than emphasized the need for having access to news via their mobile browser. Similarly, WorldReader reports that women between 26 and 44 years of age are particularly interested in reading e-books from the Inspiration, Career Development and Children’s sections of the WorldReader library.
source: Opera with inputs from IT News Africa
