Opera Mini to inject $10m into Nigeria’s market

Opera Software, owners of the popular Opera Mini will invest about 10 million in Nigeria’s Internet market to further ease access to content and cut data costs.

The amount is part of a USD100 million pledged by the company as part of its capital investment across Africa. The company said in a statement that the investment will be executed over the next two years to facilitate the growth of African digital economy.

Opera said it will use the investment to speed up internet adoption in Africa and strengthen the internet ecosystem with local partners.

Commenting on the planned investment, Richard Monday, Vice President of Africa, Opera Software, said, “Africa is a very important market for Opera. Nine of the top 20 Opera Mini user countries are from Africa”.

He noted that the firm aims to invest heavily in Africa, to build a local platform and grow with the local business partners. “This platform will expand the user base for content providers, e-commerce businesses, operators, OEM’s and others to strengthen the African internet ecosystem.” He said.

Nigeria’s is Africa’s largest Internet market with about 90 million mobile Internet subscribers. Out of this number, Opera Mini, the mobile browser of the company commands about 20 million users across Nigeria.

The company’s journey into the Nigerian market started way back when the rise of feature phones saw a huge surge in the use of its mobile browser, Opera Mini. Opera disclosed that it now has 100 million monthly users in Africa. A major number that makes Africa a priority market.

The move will see Opera collaborating with local content makers, entertainers and publishers to scale its browser for ease access to web content.

The company will be coming head to head with Google Inc., a subsidiary of Alphabet that has increased its marketing investment to push its Google App which is more or less a rip-off of its Chrome browser.

Investing such amount into the market is bound to be followed by a pressure increasing revenue from advertising, the major income stream for the company.

Apart from partnering with top publishers to deliver faster and lighter access to content, Opera Mini browsers rely heavily on advertising to monetize its user base.