09 May 2017
Opera’s Africa VP Richard Monday (third from left) says the firm will build a platform to strengthen the continent’s internet ecosystem. Also pictured from left to right: Jørgen Arnesen, global marketing head; Folarin Komaiya, business development director, Opera Nigeria; and Song Lin, COO, Opera Software.
Opera Software plans to invest USD100m over the next two years to facilitate the growth of Africa’s digital economy.
The web browser specialist says its aim is to speed up internet adoption on the continent and strengthen the digital ecosystem with local partners.
Norway headquartered Opera says Africa is on its way to transforming itself into digital continent with the rapid adoption of the mobile internet.
For the past five years, the firm claims its Mini browser has been a “key facilitator” in bringing more than half of the region’s internet population online by featuring tools for lowering data costs.
Richard Monday, Opera’s VP for Africa, says: “We aim to invest heavily in Africa, to build a local platform and grow with the local business partners. This platform will expand the user base for content providers, e-commerce businesses, operators, OEMs and others to strengthen the African internet ecosystem.”
Opera says it is now focusing on making the next generation of browsers to cater to the needs of local web users.
For example, to bring more first-time internet users without the fear of high data costs or lack of local relevant content, the company plans to invest in developing what it describes as a “state-of-the-art” AI engine for smartphone users.
“Opera users in Africa will get fully personalised and localised content delivered to their browser, the entry point for their internet experience, while the data usage can be reduced up to 90 per cent,” claims the firm.
The company adds that it is now working with more than 47 top tier African publishers covering 107 web sites on this initiative.
It is also seeking local partners to integrate value-added services, mobile payment and data bundling into its browser product.
In addition, Opera is expanding with new offices in Lagos and Nairobi to support business and product development. These will add to the premises it currently has on the continent in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
The firm plans to hire around 100 people for its new offices over the next three years.
According to Monday, nine of the top 20 countries globally that use Mini are from the continent. Last November, Opera announced it had notched up 100 million monthly users in Africa, and claims Mini is now the region’s most popular mobile browser.
This is partly corroborated by research recently published by Jumia.
In its latest Mobile Africa Study, the Nigerian online retailer carried out surveys in 15 countries which generate more than 80 per cent of Africa’s GDP: Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Mozambique, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Senegal.
Jumia revealed that while 50 per cent of customers on the continent access its mobile site using Google Chrome, that figure falls to 28 per cent in Nigeria.
Here, Opera Mini is more popular, with 41 per cent of Jumia Nigeria’s mobile traffic coming from the browser.
