Facebook has released statistics of major African markets, Nigeria and Kenya, showing it has nearly 20 million users in the two countries, with the majority of these using mobile devices to access their profiles.
The numbers are the first to be released by the social network for Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa and Kenya, East Africa’s most developed country.
Facebook considers the two countries very important entry points into the continent with nearly one billion people.
It opened its first African office in Johannesburg in June as the continent’s growing population and relatively low levels of internet access present a huge unexploited market for the social network to earn advertising revenue.
Nigeria had nearly 15 million monthly active users as of June 30 this year, all of whom used mobile devices to upload, like and share content on the social network.
In kenya, 95 percent of the 4.5 million monthly active users did so via mobiles.
The data also showed that South Africa has 12 million monthly active Facebook users.
Facebook says that due to its strong advertising partnerships in the continent, it would use the new office in Johannesburg to expand its business across the continent.
The social site also said that its active population in Africa grew 20 percent to 120 million in June from 100 million in September last year. A large portion of these users were in North Africa.
