Facebook’s growth is on the way to match internet users in Ethiopia.

Yesterday I came to know some interesting statistics on the Facebakers web site for facebook usage in Ethiopia. I was inquisitive at how many people in Ethiopia are on facebook – they are many more than I initially thought since the number is now approaching 250,000. In fact, in a country where only 450,400 citizens are internet users, you could say that such a number would make facebook to match the whole internet users in a country! In Addis Ababa, facebook has gone undoubtedly mainstream. Below are some of the interesting statistics from Facebakers on facebook adoption in Ethiopia for December 2010:

• Total Facebook Users: 210,000
• Penetration of population:0.24 %
• Position in the global country ranking: 105
• Penetration of online population in Ethiopia:47.13%
• Male facebook users : 69%
• Female facebook users : 31%

Facebook Ethiopia Usage by Age Distribution.

• 13-15: 3%
• 16-17: 3%
• 18-24: 41%
• 25-34: 42%
• 35-44: 8%
• 45-54: 2%
• 55-64: 1%
• 65+: 1%

In all of the above, I found the following to be interesting trends:

• Penetration of online population in Ethiopia is the fastest growing. A very telling trend that online life will shortly go mainstream.
• The total number of users in Ethiopia also implies that if Ethiopia has around 450,500 internet users in total then the penetration is that almost more than half of all internet users in Ethiopia are on facebook.
• Male users of facebook are almost double in number compared to female users. This is against the opinion that says facebook is for females in Ethiopia.
• The 18-24 and 25-34 age brackets dominate facebook usage in Ethiopia currently with a combined percentage of 83%

For the full report on facebook in Ethiopia including graphs go to Socialbakers here>