A study commissioned by Facebook and conducted by Genesis Analytics in eight African countries – Senegal, Ivory Coast, DRC, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Mauritius, and Kenya – reveals that social media platforms are helping to accelerate economic growth and opportunity across the continent.
The African continent is heavily dependent on its small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are the backbone of the economy. As many countries across the continent have embarked on their digital transformation, the research shows that digital platforms can play a key role in the continent’s development.
According to the study’s findings, SMEs are an increasingly important vehicle for achieving youth employment, gender parity and intra-regional trade in Africa. The report surveyed SMEs on the continent and the data showed that companies using Facebook applications (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger) have younger employees with an average share of 45% of employees under the age of 30.
In addition, SMEs using Facebook reported a higher frequency of being owned by women, while SMEs in the industrial sector ranked the ability to access new foreign markets as the most beneficial advantage to gain from these applications.
In this way, social media and digital tools can be a catalyst for realizing the three latent opportunities in Africa:
1- Leverage Africa’s competitive advantage of an extremely young population;
2- Attracting more women into formal economic activity; and
3- Diversifying and expanding intra-African trade.
