A new study by the Internet Society released on Aug. 30 at the African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) revealed that Internet access and availability are not enough to get people online, but in order to make the Internet more appealing, there is need to encourage homegrown content.
Hence, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder while on a visit to Nigeria recently, has decided that more African languages will be added on its network’s application to make the social media platform more accessible to Africans and to ensure that Africa does not lag behind as the world becomes digital.
The “ Promoting Content in Africa” report indicates that despite the fact that improvements have been made in Internet Infrastructure, notably, in mobile networks, Internet adoption rates are still slow in many African countries because people lack compelling reasons to connect. Language barrier is noted as one of the reasons a number of people are not joining the platform yet and also due to lack of relevant homegrown content.
Content and services are identified as the major factors in making the Internet more engaging, particularly when the subject of thoughts is relevant and in a language that users can easily understand. But this is found to be lacking in Africa, which could increase Internet adoption.
On the platform currently is the Hausa language – a language, which is spoken as a first language by about 44 million people and a second language by several million others in Nigeria.
“I am glad we support Hausa and we are planning on supporting a lot more languages soon,’’ says Zuckerberg.
Other languages on the platform also are Kiswahili, Somali and Arabic.
On the leagues table of Facebook users in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria tops the chart with more than 15 million users, next is South Africa with thirteen million users and Kenya with five million users, according to Internet World Stats.
Zuckerberg’s plans to install high speed Internet for Africa was stalled by the destruction of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on its Florida launch pad on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016.
Expressing his dismay at this incident, Zuckerberg took to his Facebook page: “As I am here in Africa, I am deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.”
In contrast, the expert said other technologies like Aquila have been developed as well to connect people, referring to the solar-powered plane being developed by Facebook to make the Internet available in remote areas.
“We will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided,” he said, adding that,” the problem is not the money; it is that now it may take longer to connect people.”
Simdie Onuoha, a social media expert in Nigeria, says Zuckerberg’s visit is “both humanitarian and entrepreneurial, because Africa has great potential. We have some of the world’s fastest developing countries here, so there is hope for these countries to grow.
