Thirty-five percent of Kenyans are internet poor, a new index has shown. 

Thirty-five percent of Kenyans are internet poor, a new index has shown. 

The 2022 Internet Poverty Index by the World Data Lab’s projects Kenya at 37 in internet poverty in Africa, out of the 47 countries surveyed.

According to the study, internet poverty is measured by how many people can or cannot afford a minimum package of mobile internet. 

It is based on affordability, quantity and quality of internet in a country, where affordability assumes 10% of total spending of a citizen.

Quantity assumes a 1GB monthly usage, while quality is gauged by download and upload speed, bandwidth, latency, 2G, 3G, and 4G coverage, as well as the number of servers per 100,000 inhabitants. 

As such, ​​a person is considered internet poor if they cannot afford a minimum quantity (1 GB) and quality (10 Mbps download speed) of internet services without spending more than 10 percent of their disposable income.

Out of the Kenyan population, internet poverty is higher among females (36.9% of Kenyan women are internet poor), compared to 34.1% of the male population. 

Burundi leads the internet poverty index across the continent, with 96.6% of the country’s population living in poverty.

Madagascar and Malawi follow with 96.2% and 95.5% respectively.

On the other hand, Algeria, Mauritius and Tunisia lead the internet connectivity in Africa, with just under 3% of their populations living in internet poverty.

There are nearly 1.4 billion persons (18 percent of the world population) who live in internet poverty, 709 million (50%) of whom live in Africa.

At the same time, nearly 33% (457 million) of the world’s internet poor population is from Asia.