(Africa) To The Power Of 19
In the United States, there is a famous political expression about budgeting, and spending, and how one becomes immune eventually to even the concept of a billion dollars.
What Senator Dirksen meant is that if you see a number too much, or too often, the number loses its power or impact on you. Eventually, a number that used to shock you becomes passe, for example:
The median age in Africa is 19.7
Yep yep, people say that when they read it — very young, young place, totally agree and off they go nodding..
However, as someone who lives and breathes Africa now after decades in the digital realm in the United States and Europe, I don’t think people fully appreciate the impact of this number.
This means half of the people were born 2 years AFTER the attacks of 9/11.
This means that significantly more than half the people in Africa were not alive to see the millenium turn over in 1999.
President Bill Clinton? Prime Minister Blair? None on the first — not many on the second.
In fact, that number, 19.7, has the power to change literally everything in Africa and, ultimately the world, for the next decade or two or three of our lives.
Before we get into how a population this young changes everything from travel to news to mobile money, let’s take a moment and remind ourselves what median age actually means:
Of the billion plus people in Africa, 50% of them are BELOW the age of 19 and just 50 percent of the people above it — 500, 600 million people are under the age of 19 and 500, 600 million people are above that.
Of the 500 million above the median age, of course, people 20, 21, 22 and 23 are the largest groups — and the size of the each year’s population declines as we get older.
What about a country like say Germany you ask?
Well, in Germany, the median age is 48 years old — so the difference is shocking — when you visit, Germany feels very positive and vibrant but its median age is more than twice of Africa. A country like Italy or Japan is even older.
The core of Africa’s youth movement is Generation Alpha — defined as people born since 2000. To further extend this a bit, we coined the term Generation Alpha Plus to define the true power market in Africa as people aged 18–35 years old.
So why do I think this number and this group is so impactful, more so than most people here consider? It’s simply because the numbers are so overwhelming and the pace of change so dramatic in Africa because it is being driven by this tidal wave of youth.
800 million digital natives.
800 million early adaptors of tools and technology.
800 million incredible drivers of change.
For example, education
Well, there is no ability for the governments here (or anywhere if faced with the same pressures) to build enough schools, so you will continue to see massive migration to online education. There are hundreds of major universities offering online learning here and, in fact, it is likely the greatest growth market in the world.
But how will those students access their classes and learning? Only one way — through their phones — the digital revolution in Africa is non-existent — it is a mobile revolution pure and simple — look at this graph from one of our sites in Africa — this is real time traffic on our site — of the three people on desktops, two were working in our office at the time.
Paper money? Bank Accounts? Generation Alpha leapfrogged all of that. Just as Africa didn’t pause to get landlines, and instead went straight to mobile, GAP is moving from being underage and unbanked to being banked via mobile. MPesa is expanding into East Africa and Zimbabwe doesn’t really even have cash except the off and on again use of the US dollar.
Crypto?
Cryptocurrency adoption in Africa grew 1200% between July 2020 and June 2021, making it the fastest adoption rate in the world.
– The Africa Report
This generation has no problems with it. And then we see how it impacts our world. For some of our sites, we see 98–99% of the visitors are mobile — not 80, or 90 percent but close to 100%. This impacts everything from how we write stories, craft headlines or work with brands and advertisers.
There is only one revolution in Africa — Mobile.
In Kenya, the SIM card penetration is now 130%. And growing rapidly. Here, people use multiple sim cards, trading between vendors for the best deals and options. The extent to which this happens actually skews analytics data we see on our sites because our percentage of new users is often higher than would be logical. Why? When you switch sim cards but return to a site you often read, it restarts the data collection process on sites — and you are re-registered as new.
US New Mobile Subscribers:
10 million a yearSub Saharan Africa New Mobile Subscribers:
40 million a year– Statista
Can you hear me? Not yet.
The media journey in Africa is very much a reflection of the post-colonial realty of the continent — media, overall, developed through colonialist rulers — English media extended into Kenya and Zimbabwe for example. When independence came to Africa, the media transferred within these colonial borders and often, transferred to new governments. Broadcast especially has remained in the hands of the leaders.
In the United States, from 2000–2004, I was very involved in the emerging digital media landscape that included the rise of bloggers — this culminated, in terms of my experience at least, with the launch of the Huffington Post. Behind the continued rise of sites and voices were two key factors that to date have not developed in Africa.
One is an integrated platform that allows content creators to monetize their work — which, secondly, is often done through affiliate networks which have been slow to develop in Africa.
Just as GAP leapfrogged straight to mobile phones and mobile money, so too will GAP leapfrog the last twenty years of media development.
And yes, we intend to help them jump. More on that soon.
