A useful website in assessing how the online landscape is changing and how this might affect shareholder communications is provided by the World Internet Statistics website. For 11 African stock markets, that have been the subject of our recent investor relations research, I have extracted growth statistics over the past 10 years. All of the stats belong to World Internet Statistics. The stats show the following:-
- that overall compound average growth in Internet users per annum has grown 35% per annum in our target markets
- the market that has enjoyed the highest growth is Uganda (58% CAGR per annum) with a current internet user population of 2.5m persons
- Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana and Zimbabwe follow with growth rates of 56,48,48 and 45% CAGR respectively
- Kenya is next at 37%
- The overall Internet penetration rate (users expressed as a percentage of the total population) is 6.8%. Mauritius has the highest penetration rate followed, can you believe it, by Zimbabwe at 12.5%
The combined total Internet users in these markets, markets in which there is a relatively high level of investor interest, is 21 million. This is 21m users out of Africa’s total of 67m users, or 32% of total. A disproportionately higher population of Internet users reside in countries with active stock markets. A total of 329 m people reside in our target markets the majority of which (149m) reside in Nigeria.
There is a far higher population of Internet users than there are shareholders. And herein is the opportunity.