More than 16 million Nigerians sign in to Facebook every month.7.2 million log in daily. These are numbers you can take to the bank, they come directly from 1, Hacker Way.
As at Q4 2015, there were 5.2 million monthly active users of Facebook in Kenya. 5 million of them access the network from their mobile phones. In South Africa, 13 million log into Facebook every month. 7.8 million, are active every day.
As its Africa userbase grows, Facebook has become serious about the revenue opportunity the continent represents, and is now aggressively working on its local presence in key markets. Top Facebook executives recently visited Nigeria and Ghana to meet with advertising agencies and small businesses to discuss how to maximise their efforts on the network, which Nunu Ntshingila, Head of Africa for Facebook, has described as “the best platform for African SMEs to promote their brands.”
Ms. Nsthingila was accompanied on these visits by Nicola Mendelson, EMEA vice-president at Facebook to introduce new Facebook technologies that have been customised specifically for what it terms “high-growth markets”. Lightweight video ad formats, “bandwidth targeting”, and “expat targeting” are among the ways Facebook is hoping to create unique and market sensitive opportunities for local brands to engage their target audiences on the platform.
In September 2015, Facebook released statistics to the effect that there were a hundred million people in Africa who were active on the network. Going by the latest figures, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya alone now have at least 34 million monthly active users between them.
