Nigeria has been ranked as the seventh Sub-Saharan African country with the fastest internet speed with an average download speed of 27.62 Mbps.
This was contained in the 2024 Worldwide Broadband Speed Report released on Tuesday.
According to the report, the broadband speed tests conducted across 220 countries, showed that Nigeria improved in global speed ranking, moving up from 133rd position in 2023 to 132nd in 2024.
It further showed that in Africa, Réunion, South Africa, Eswatini, Rwanda, Mauritius, and Botswana, ranked first to sixth, with Nigeria coming behind them in 7th place.
Réunion topped Sub-Saharan Africa with 63.29 Mbps average internet speed, while South Africa came second with 42.42 Mbps.
Further details of the report indicate that the average internet speed in Africa was 14.99 Mbps making Africa the region with the second-lowest internet speed globally.
“50 countries were measured in the second-slowest region Sub-Saharan Africa, which averaged a download speed of 14.99Mbps overall. All but two of the countries found themselves in the slowest half of the league table.
“Going against the trend somewhat were Réunion (63.29Mbps, 75th), South Africa (42.42Mbps, 114th), and Eswatini (37.23Mbps, 120th). Meanwhile, Sudan (4.02Mbps, 223rd), Central African Republic (4.08Mbps, 222nd), and Ethiopia (4.45Mbps, 221st) all fell among the slowest ten countries in the world for average network speed,” the report stated.
It further stated that the analysis of around 1.5 billion broadband speed tests worldwide revealed that Iceland has the fastest broadband in the world. The country’s average internet speed stood at 279.55 Mbps, while Jersey, another Western European country, came second with 273.51 Mbps. An Asian country, Macao emerged the third in the world with 234.74 Mbps internet speed
According to the report, 35 countries failed to achieve average speeds of 10Mbps or greater, the speed deemed by UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom to be the minimum required to cope with the needs of a typical family or small business.
This is down from 48 countries in 2023, 67 countries in 2022, and 94 countries in 2021, indicating significant speed improvements are ongoing in many parts of the world.
