Thanks to the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, we are able to track old Africa’s Internet statistics from Internet World Stats. Cached pages date back to August 2002. The historical data is useful in projecting future trends. For example, over the past 2 years, the Internet penetration rate in …

North African nations experience greater percentages of Internet users than other regions
Sub-Saharan Africa has very poor Internet penetration
Note: The world average Internet penetration rate in 2009 is 24.7%

Below is a summary of how African countries measure based on Human Development Index (the United Nations measure of well-being in a country) and the percentage of each country’s population with Internet access. Only two African nations rank in the upper half of the world, based on the HDI data, …

A direct correlation exists between HDI and the percentage of Internet users in African countries. The higher the HDI, the greater proportion of the population using the Internet.

HDI Range
# African
% of African Countries
% Range Is African

Very High (HDI > 0.900)
0
0%
0%

High (0.900 …

The above chart is based on data from the year 2000 as listed under the African country profiles on Balancing Act Africa. Data points represent the lowest documented cost for monthly dial-up access, in USD. It must be noted that, in addition to a standard monthly fee, most providers charged …

Brief analysis:

Although all nations have experience rapid and substantial growth in Internet penetration rate (basically, the number of Internet users), the single-digit numbers are still very small in comparison to the world average. Statistically speaking, a twelve-fold change from 0.4% to 5% in a matter of 8 years is quite …