Where do Nigerians access the Internet?

The recently released BusinessDay Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU) survey report examined where Nigerians get access to the internet the most.  Eighty-nine percent of respondents say they have access to the internet in their offices while 55 percent have access through their mobile phones. But while most people have internet in their offices and also on other mediums, no other medium or location provides coverage for a longer period than the mobile phones.

Seventy percent of respondents say they have access to the internet on their mobile phones for 24 hours while the average percentage of respondents who have access for 24 hours on their desktop computers, laptops and Tablets is 23 percent. The home is fast becoming a veritable source of internet connectivity as almost half of those sampled have access to the internet at home.

There is no gender coloration to the location from which respondents access the internet. The survey result shows that 90% of males compared to 93% of female respondents have internet access at their offices while over 56% of males have access through their phones compared to 57% of female respondents are connected through their phones. The individual responses by gender are similar to the percentages which are exhibited by the population of responses. At the home front, 51% of the sampled men have internet access compared to 29% of women who have access to internet at home.

It is interesting that more men have access to the internet at home than in the office. It seem to reflect the cultural inclination when women are at home, they are more likely to be taking care of the house chores and the children than relaxing in front of their lap tops browsing the internet. It may also reflect the fact that more men take work to complete at home than women do.

Women are also seen to spend slightly more time on the internet in the office than men. These could indicate that women try to do all the work they have to do online in the office knowing that when they get home, their will little or no time to spend online.

This pattern of gender internet usage has marketing implications. For products targeted at the female gender, day time marketing will be ideal. However, marketing firms that have products targeted at the men folk should extend the online advert of these products to late in the evening when the men are still online.

Another interesting finding of the report is the low number of people who indicated that they access the internet at business centres or cybercafe’s which explains the rapid decline in that business seen recently. Only a small proportion (7%) of respondents said they access the internet through cyber cafes and business centers. Not surprisingly, many business centres have found out that their business model is no longer in vogue or experiencing steady decline as users now find alternative sources of accessing the internet.

The dead business model of the Cyber café is easily seen in the fact that no respondent in the 16 to 24 years bracket indicated that they access internet at business centres while only four per cent of those in the 25 to 34 years age bracket and 13 per cent of those on 35 to 44 years age bracket indicated that they visit cyber cafés for their internet needs. This implies that only legacy clients who used cyber cafes in the early days of internet still patronize cyber cafes. The younger people in the 16 to 24 years age bracket, who should have replaced the older customers, no longer find cyber café’s as a place to access the internet. They are meeting their internet needs from alternative sources, a clear indication that the Cyber Café business has no future.

BusinessDay Research in its report states that the market from access bundles which are tailored for multiple users at home presents an exciting opportunity for Internet Service Providers ISP who can still take advantage of the market of internet users who are not satisfied with the amount and quality of access they get at work. Indeed, there is a myriad of activities which this market may need to carry out online that the office environment may not support; hence products which offer internet access at home are apt.

Thus while the Cyber café business is dead, the future lies in ISPs and broadband service providers being able to take hold of the home market for internet access as offices increasingly lock out the ability of staff to conduct personal transactions online.

By: Anthony Osae-Brown