Business
Africa’s rapidly growing middle class giving rise to more use of technology
The iPad in use in an African class room. PHOTO/Courtesy tlt.its.psu.edu
Two years after the launch of the iPad, the tablet has a considerable footprint among business professionals, especially in Africa.
According to the results of the IDG’s latest “iPad for Business Survey”, African professionals are almost twice as likely as the global average to be supplied with an iPad by their employer.
47 percent of African respondents said they own a corporate-issue iPad. This is compared to the global average of 24 percent.
E-editor of IDG Connect Kathryn Cave says: “This must in part be due to vast emphasis on mobile technology across the continent, but I also wonder if it provides more evidence of the rapid consumerisation of society and meteoric rise of an elite middle class.”
Africans also were ahead of the global average when it came to using an iPad for work communications at 70 percent and Web browsing at 93 percent.