So you are saying that Nigeria had 0 users in 2000 and have added 10 million in 8 years (see chart on internet world stats link). Population of 140 million.
No. If you look at the figures on the original table here: -
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm
you will see that Nigeria had ~200,000 users in December 2000. It might therefore appear more correct to say that they added 9.8 million users, but the precision of the data doesn't support that. Are you going to quibble about 2%?
Note that there are multiple sources of this data, but that they all quote approximately equal figures. Try here, too:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/world/world.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/200901200022.html
You can even go and look up the data presented at the IGF meeting in Hyderabad, India, recently.
So proportionally fewer Nigerians have access to internet than South Africans...?.
Yes. The figures quoted in the article are the total number of Internet users (and were taken from multiple sources, BTW). What's meant by an "Internet user" in terms of some statistics is defined here: -
http://www.internetworldstats.com/surfing.htm
Penetration ~= internet users / population. In this case, RSA fairs better than Nigeria, coming 11th in the internetworldstats list with 9.4%. Nigeria comes 15th, with 6.8%. Note that countries like Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and even Zimbawe come before RSA in terms of Internet penetration.
However you slice and dice it, and no matter how much you may cavil about particular words or numbers, the point is that it's inappropriate to compare RSA with the first and second worlds. Even comparing us with our third world neighbours in Africa, we are not exactly a shining example.
That's why the original article title is "A Wakeup Call".
