Analyzing Africa’s Internet Traffic

Prospect Magazine recently looked at the world’s internet traffic to debunk the myth that it would be full of porn sites. The good news was that in the Top 100, only two were adult sites, which hopefully means people are
turning to the web for information and not their more carnal vices.

A brief note for those temperamentally inclined to believe that every other click on the worldwide web is a quest for sex—in the latest Alexa rankings of the globe’s 500 most-visited sites, only two of the top 100 actually supply such gratification (these being, for purely academic interest, youporn dot com and RedTube—which proudly dubs itself a “Portal gigante de vídeos de sexo”—at ranks 48 and 52 respectively). Indeed, sex online, both in terms of percentage of web visits and of search terms entered, has been in fairly steady decline for the last decade.

So, what’s hot? Most of this year’s top 100 are, variously, search engines (yahoo and google in its various incarnations are at the top); social networking sites (Facebook comes in at 5, MySpace at 7); media hosting and sharing sites (YouTube at 3, RapidShare at 12); news sites (the BBC is top among these at 47, then CNN at 50, then the New York Times at 89); information sites (Wikipedia and imdb, at 8 and 46); selling and trading sites (Amazon and eBay, at 37 and 64); and corporate sites (Microsoft lead in 13th, 64 places above Apple’s 77th). And then there’s blogging in all its forms, beginning with blogger.com at number 9.

What are the most popular sites on the internet in African countries? Well, I couldn’t do all 50+ countries so I looked at Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria…the countries most often associated with being the technology leaders of their respective regions.

Kenya

Unsurprisingly Yahoo, Google and Facebook top the list in that order. In fact, no local content makes the list until #14 and #15, where the news outlets The Nation and The East African Standard come in. Lifestyle blog and online magazine Haiya comes in at #19. The African mobile social network Mig33 is down at #79 but that number probablly doesn’t include all the internal use and sms traffic it gets.

Egypt

Google, Yahoo and Facebook ranked 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Other highlights included local news portal Myegy at #9, the Arab social network Maktoob at #11, music sharing site Nogomi at #42 and sporting site Zamalek Fans at #91.

South Africa

In South Africa Google takes the #1, #3 and #9 slot with Google.co.za, Google.com and Blogger.com. Naspers’ online portal News24 closes out the top 10 and local portals Gumtree and Independent Online rank at #11 and #15. The SA specific search engine Ananzi and the University of Pretoria close out the list at #98 and #99.

Ghana

The top three are what you should expect by now. Interestingly enough, local content ranks high here with news portal Ghana Web at #7 and business news site Business Ghana at #18. Silicon Valley’s darling messaging service Meebo comes in at #70. The U.S. Embassy website peeps in at #96.

Nigeria

The usual suspects open the top three. The Nigerian web Forum Nairaland is at #14. Job portal Naija Hot Jobs comes in at #22. But I didn’t at all expect to see Japanese comicbook/graphic novel site One Manga at #80.

^{To all my local cohorts, I tried to look up Uganda but Alexa.com doesn’t even track the countries internet traffic. I’m sure Appfrica was in the top three though, lol.}