The Popularity of Programming Languages in Africa 2009

Last year I used data from Irrational Exuberance to find the common threads of computer programming in African countries. I thought I’d update that post with some new information for 2009. The way this data was collected is simple. Using Google Insights I did a search and filtered results by the ‘programming’ category. Additionally, All results were restricted to searching in the year 2009. Obviously method itself significantly reduces the accuracy, so take the findings for what they are, a light barometer.

After sometime here running a software company I’ve got a much better understanding of what languages are popular among developers so I’ve changed the analysis from the languages used previously. The languages benchmarked were C++, C#, Python, Erlang, Common Lisp, Java, Ruby, and PHP. For kicks I threw in Kannel (the open source SMS gateway), j2me (mobile Java platform), and BREW because of the high mobile penetration rate, one might expect development for mobile would be important. There were two measures, our own scoring system and the Search Volume Index score which was used to rank only within Africa.

Search Volume Index is defined as being ‘normalized by the average search volume for the term you are searching for over the given search period’. Information from different regions and countries can be compared equally because the data set has been normalized against traffic for the search terms coming the respective region. I think this skews results for terms with low data because if 0% of Zimbabweans are searching for a specific term, Google will rank them just as high (if not higher) than if 0% of the United States searches for that same term. Clearly one has more people actively searching than the other, but again this isn’t a scientific study by any means. I found it odd that this meant that Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa showed up in the Top 10, in multiple scenarios, where there was limited data.

The system used to score is simple. Any languages ranked on the ‘Most Popular’ had to have countries with an SVI score above 0 from Google. Languages failing to meet this criteria are grouped separately, unranked. Programming languages were awarded 10 points for each African country in their Top 10 and 1 point for each country that has any data for that language at all. This we’ll call their Appfrica Popularity Index score (ha! API, get it!). Thus, even though Ruby and J2ME had the same number of countries returning data, J2ME ranks much higher for having South Africa listed in the Top 10 World Wide.

Click Here to view the Interactive Chart.

POPULARITY INDEX SCORES

1. Java [Score: 39]

Java was by far the most popular language on the continent due to it’s ubiquity on mobile and the desktop. Country ranking within the continent was 1. Botswana, 2. Ethiopia, 3. Uganda, 4. Mozambique, 5. Zimbabwe, 6. Kenya, 7. Madagascar, 8. Ghana, 9. Tunisia, 10. Nigeria

2. Php [Score: 28]

PHP, the mullet of programming skills, also offered up a lot of data. Ranking by country: 1. Tunisia, 2. Senegal, 3. Kenya, 4. Nigeria, 5. Morocco

3. C++ [Score: 19]

Uganda is ranked as being 8th in the number of countries searching for C++. 1. Uganda, 2. Tunisia, 3. Senegal, 4. Kenya, 5. Morocco

4. C# [Score: 18]

C# also revealed some interesting details 1. Ethiopia, 2. South Africa, 3. Egypt and Tunisia (tie), 4. Nigeria, 5. Kenya

5. J2ME [Score: 12]

South Africa ranked in the top ten countries in the world searching for things related to J2ME. Egypt was the only other country with data.

6. Python [Score: 3]

Countries with data 1. South Africa, 2. Egypt and Morocco (tie)

7. Ruby [Score: 2]

South Africa and Egypt were the only countries offering data from the continent.

OTHER LANGUAGES

Here you can see how the other languages fare world wide. I didn’t have access to much data here other than how Google ranked the ten highest ranking countries for each language.

Erlang

Simbabwe, Zambia and South Africa at 4,5, and 6 respectively. Again, the fact that they all have an SVI of zero means Google is ranking based on previous searches and population and normalizing against that.

Objective C

Zimbabwe closes out the Top Ten of world-wide searches for Objective C.

Kannel

Kannel is very popular in Africa, but apparently not popular enough. Still Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa rank high.

Brew

Another mobile language. Not enough data to determine anything but Google’s SVI ranks the magic three together again.

Symbian*

For Symbian I removed the ‘programming’ modifier because with it on, the results were quite different and less dynamic within Africa. Click here to see those results. With the filter off, I was able to rank use of Symbian within the continent. 1. Nigeria, 2. South Africa, 3. Egypt, 4.Tunisia, 5. Morocco, 6. Algeria

Lisp

Not enough data to determine anything.

All we’re really measuring here is the aggregate number and possibly the frequency of search terms coming from these countries related to a keyword. This could indicate more software development using languages in those areas, expert programmers trying to find work, or it might just indicate there’s a lot of students looking for help. Results are also skewed by the filters, which may be over compensating to find only terms related to programming (Java as in programming versus Java as in coffee). Other than taking an actual census from each country, this is the only method for figuring this out I could think of. There are a few groups that are dedicated to tracking the popularity of programming languages like TIOBE but they don’t offer any specific info for Africa. However, according to them, the most popular languages in the world for 2009 are: 1. Java, 2. C, 3. PHP, 4. C++, and 5. (Visual) Basic.