unday, October 21st, 2012
Nigeria has become Africa’s second largest country on Facebook, after Egypt with over 6 million users, overtaking South Africa for the first time ever.
Last month, both countries ranked among the top 10 growing countries on the social networking site, with Nigeria seeing over 720,000 user growth with a growth rate of 14.09% over the last month, while South Africa witnessing over 690,000 user jump with 12.96% growth rate.
As at September 2012, South Africa had 6 million Facebook users while Nigeria had 5.8 million users. However, the West African country surpassed South Africa during the first week of October 2012, as it surged to 6.5 million users as at October 7 adding over 800,000 users within the past month.
The latest statistics from Socialbakers shows that there are 6,685,280 Facebook users in Nigeria as at October 19, which ranks it 31st in the world, after Russia, thereby surpassing South Africa for the first time.
Although South Africa grew by over 1 million users within the past month, it wasn’t enough to help maintain its position. The country now has 6,543,280Facebook users as at October 19, just about 140,000 users less of Nigeria, ranking 32nd in the world.
In June 2012, we speculated that Nigeria could surpass South Africa at the end of the year if both countries were to add just about the same number of users.
While the country is likely to continue its increase in Facebook users in the coming months, its Facebook penetration is still very low at 4.39% of the country’s population and 15.20% in relation to the number of Internet users.
Nigeria crossed five million Facebook users in September 2012, about 11 months since the country hit 4 million users and has now recorded a major milestone, crossing a million users within a month.
It would be interesting to see which of these countries becomes first to reach 10 million Facebook users and we predict that Nigeria will reach this figure by end of 2013.
Rapide Tech 