Google Insights for Search’s Regional Interest feature plots the relative global search popularity on a map. Included is a snapshot of 4 current themes: farming, health, education, ICT. Relatively speaking, how popular are these searches from within Africa, and, how does the domestic search share compare to global averages?

Farming.

Google searches for “farming” have increased globally since 2009. Often cited is the case where a farmer uses the Internet to learn sustainable agricultural methods. Better yet, the data seems to support such habits. Botswana claims the highest search volume index for ‘farming’ in the world. Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Zambia, and Namibia are not far behind, suggesting that using Google to research farming is a popular in southern Africa. Data seems limited, however, as neighboring Malawi and Mozambique show no volume. Perhaps Internet users in these nations do not use Google for their online agricultural needs.

Health.

Google searches for “health” have been relatively popular in Africa for years. And, the term is relatively most popular in a tight geographic area: Swaziland has a higher share of ‘health’ searchers than any other nation and Lesotho and Malawi show similar trends. In fact, of the 19 of the 25 nations with the highest ‘health’ search density are African. Health appears not as popular in North Africa. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia all show little interest in health versus other subjects.

Education.

Globally, the percentage of Google searches containing “education” has decreased since at least 2004. Often, when an area gets connected to the Internet, the first step is to bolster education. It seems as if this was the case with the United States and Europe pre-2004. Now, however, ‘education’ remains a relatively popular search term in Africa. Lesotho leads the way by recording the highest index of any nation. Swaziland, Tanzania, Malawi, Botswana, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda round out the top 8. For reasons unknown, Angola ranks near the bottom of nations with data.

ICT.

“ICT” continues to be a very Afro-centric term. Led by Rwandan searches, African nations claim the top eleven highest search volume indexes for the term. What’s more, searches for the French equivalent, TIC, are very popular in Burkina Faso and Cameroon – perhaps a sign that initiatives are underway in these areas. The highest non-African nations are, not surprisingly, Netherlands and the United Kingdom (two nations known for their foreign tech initiatives). From this, we can gather either that the African public is interested in ICT, or that few people use Google Search and those who do work on development projects.

View Insights for Search analysis for ‘apps’, ‘mobile’, and ‘Facebook’ here.