An estimated 5.5 billion people will be online in 2024, an increase of 227 million individuals based on revised estimates for 2023, said the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The estimates featured in ITU’s Facts and Figures 2024 showed that connectivity continues to increase worldwide but reveals the complexities of reaching communities in low-income countries.
While an estimated 68 per cent of the global population is now online and all indicators tracked in the report showed improvement, stubborn digital divides persist and about one-third of the world’s people remain offline.
ITU Secretary-General, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, said: “Facts and Figures 2024 is a tale of two digital realities between high-income and low-income countries.
“Stark gaps in critical connectivity indicators are cutting off the most vulnerable people from online access to information, education and employment opportunities. This report is a reminder that true progress in our interconnected world isn’t just about how fast we move forward, but about making sure everyone moves forward together.”
Indeed, checks by this medium showed that as of October 2024, statistics for the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), released yesterday, showed that there were 134.7 million Internet users, while broadband penetration stood at 42.2 per cent.
Also, the NCC report showed that telecom operators increased mobile subscriptions from 154.9 million in September (after NIN-SIM audit) to N157.6 million in October, subsequently increasing teledensity from 71.4 per cent to 72.7 per cent.
Indeed, the ITU report noted that Internet use remains tightly linked to the level of development.
As such, it noted that in high-income countries, 93 per cent of the population is estimated to be using the Internet in 2024. This contrasts with low-income countries where only 27 per cent of the population is estimated to be online.
ITU posited that connectivity challenges also remain in the least developed countries (LDCs) where only 35 per cent of the population is estimated online and landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) with only 39 per cent online.
In total, ITU said an estimated 2.6 billion people will be offline in 2024, accounting for 32 per cent of the world’s population. This is down from the newly revised estimate of 2.8 billion for 2023, which represents 35 per cent of the population.
Director of ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, said the world is inching towards universal access at a time that it should be sprinting.
“While we continue to make progress on connectivity, our advances mask significant gaps in the world’s most vulnerable communities, where digital exclusion makes life even more challenging. We must intensify our efforts to remove the barriers that keep people offline and close the usage gap and renew our commitment to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity so that everyone can access the Internet,” he stated.
According to the report, other major findings in the 2024 report include that the world is moving slowly towards gender parity in Internet use. It disconnected that an estimated 70 per cent of men use the Internet worldwide in 2024, compared with 65 per cent of women.
Although there are 189 million more men than women using the Internet, the report found that the world has been moving towards gender parity except in LDCs. (According to the revised estimates, an estimated 68 per cent of men and 63 per cent of women were using the Internet in 2023.)
Further, it noted a lack of progress in bridging the urban-rural divide – Globally, an estimated 83 per cent of urban dwellers use the Internet in 2024, compared with less than half of the population in rural areas (48 per cent).
Of the estimated 2.6 billion people offline in 2024, 1.8 billion people live in rural areas.
ITU said young people are more likely to use the Internet, but the gap is shrinking, stressing that worldwide, an estimated 79 per cent of people aged between 15 and 24 use the Internet, 13 percentage points more than the rest of the population.
