The always informative oAfrica blog has an interesting post on a survey of Internet users in Kinshasa, DRC. Along with oAfrica, I question some of the survey findings, especially the assertion that 1.3 million Kinois are accessing the Internet every day, and 36% are using mobile devices for that access.
The World Bank says that in 2010 there were 202,000 Internet users in all of DRC so I’m thinking that a 1.3 million figure is a bit aspirational.
But enough of what I think – what do you think? Could there really be 1.3 million Congolese online every day? And if you do, how and why are they getting online?
Depends how one counts. For example: if a user logs in 5 times during the day and that is counted as 5 users, it’s possible – especially at a place where the connection could drop several times and one is forced to log in again and again!
I have not seen the stats. Some people calculate accessing of social network site as having access to the internet. I think that’s were the number could be coming from.
Even in that case, one could count 5 accesses by the same user during a day as 5 different users! That would of course be wrong.