Social Media Week Lagos

May 15, 2015     Facebook / lagos / nigeria / social media / technology

More than 20 cities around the world are hosting Social Media Week this year.  This conference “is a leading news platform and worldwide conference that curates and shares the best ideas, innovations and insights into how social media and technology are changing business, society and culture around the world.” For the third time in a row, Social Media week came to Lagos, Nigeria last month. Nigeria is the largest country in Africa in terms of population size and has a rapidly growing economy, so it is fitting for such an event to be held there. However, the event which hosts speakers and organizations from around the globe and other African countries, proves that Africa as a whole has much to say in the dialogue about social media in emerging markets.

Africa has seen about 170 million users adopt the internet, most of whom access the internet via mobile technology. Facebook and Twitter are quickly changing the way that businesses interact with consumers, and the relationships between politicians and their constituents. Ventures Africa wrote an article about this last June and featured a Nigerian political pundit “with over 61,000 followers on Twitter” who said that “In the early 90s, the government took control of almost everything, but now social media has changed everything. People have been able to speak up and pursue causes against governments.” Many large E-commerce platforms in Africa, such as Jumiah and Bid or Buy see business leads upwards of 20% on their sites because of social media. This is one reason why social media is playing such a large role in KnocKnockAfrica, our newly launched platform for vendors from the U.S. and Africa that want to scale their businesses online.

Social media has come to the continent, is making its mark, and isn’t showing any signs that it will stop growing anytime soon. Just this last September Facebook announced that they had hit 100 Million active users in Africa, and predicted that to be at least 50% of all Africans online. This happened not long after Facebook launched Internet.org for users who cannot afford the data required to access Facebook, Wikipedia, and Google. And just a couple of months later Facebook introduced Africa and Asia to their new app, Facebook Lite for “low-end android phones”. These tools come at a time when onboarding new users to the internet and to these social sites is a smart business move. This is especially true as the populations of most sub saharan countries are predicted to continue integrating internet into their daily lives by either mobile or home broadband at rates as high as 25%.  

 
Social Media Week Lagos is therefore one of the most exciting cities to host this event, as it tracks this boom in social media use on the Continent. Did you miss out on the conference and want to learn more about what the speakers talked about? Track the many trending and interesting topics around social media and African society today on Facebook and Twitter by using #SMWLagos. You can also visit this site for the full schedule and check out some of the recap videos.
 

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