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African music is rather popular on Last.fm. Artists like Youssou N'Dour, Orchestra Baobab and Ali Farka Touréhave significant numbers of listeners. But do these listeners also come from Africa? And how popular is Last.fm in Africa?

Of course I know most Africans have something better to do than listening to last.fm - to struggle for life for example - but affordable high speed internet connections become more and more available in some african countries, so i thought it would be interesting to check how many users each african country has at this moment.

A couple of things have to be taken into account when reading the data below:

1. some countries seem to attract more misuse then others. To correct data for misuse in general I have reduced the number of users per country with 15. This is a number I estimate to reflect the avarage number of people that do not live in the country thay say they do.

2. in order to obtain an idea about the penetration of Last.fm in Africa i have related the abolute number of users to the number of inhabitants of the country. (source wikipedia).

So here are the results; And the winner is:

(Absolute number of Last.fm users)

1 South Africa 2098
2 Zimbabwe 1340
3 Egypt 709
4 Morocco 347
5 Botswana 291
6 Djibouti 222
7 Algeria 198
8 Tunisia 188
9 Uganda 180
10 Mauritius 162
11 Angola 156
12 Nigeria 151
13 Burkina Faso 146
14 Ghana 130
15 Ethiopia 125
16 Western Sahara 117
17 Kenya 108
18 Madagascar 107
19 Côte d'Ivoire 89
20 Togo 82
21 Niger 81
22 Zambia 78
23 Mozambique 77
24 Democratic Republic of the Congo 75
25 Seychelles 71
26 Cape Verde 66
27 Rwanda 58
28 Tanzania 58
29 Swaziland 55
30 Cameroon 49
31 Chad 48
32 Benin 45
33 Namibia 44
34 Senegal 42
35 Burundi 41
36 Sierra Leone 39
37 Libya 38
38 Sudan 38
39 Somalia 37
40 Gabon 35
41 Mali 34
42 Malawi 33
43 Lesotho 32
44 Eritrea 31
45 Equatorial Guinea 29
46 Comoros 26
47 The Gambia 25
48 Central African Republic 20
49 Mauritania 19
50 Liberia 15
51 Guinea-Bissau 14
52 Guinea 8
53 Congo no data (last.fm please fix the page)

I have the following comments on the data:

- South Africa is number one because it is the best developed african country. Not a surprise.
- Zimbabwe surprises me more. This country is in shatters because of 10 years of ruthless dictatorship by Robert Mugabe. I think the number of users can be explained by the number of Zimbabweans living abroad still feeling Zimbabwean because they were forced to leave the country. Real misuse might be triggerd because Zimbabwe is the last county in the list (a reverse 'Afghanistan' effect)
- Northern african Countries like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt are relatively prosporous compared to the rest of the continent. These countries have relatively good internet facilities. In Marocco the ADSL market has been liberalised and free competion has led to more and more people with ADSL connections.
- Botswana is no suprise either because this country has been one of the few countries in Africa that has been very stable and has been able to increase standards of living significantly the last 40 years.

When relating absolute numbers to the number of inhabitants the top 20 looks like this:

Country Penetration adjusted for misuse
1 Seychelles 0,000699
2 Djibouti 0,000438
3 Western Sahara 0,000398
4 Botswana 0,000173
5 Cape Verde 0,000125
6 Mauritius 0,000122
7 Zimbabwe 0,000116
8 South Africa 0,000048
9 Swaziland 0,000036
10 Equatorial Guinea 0,000028
11 Comoros 0,000018
12 Tunisia 0,000018
13 Gabon 0,000016
14 Namibia 0,000016
15 Angola 0,000013
16 Togo 0,000013
17 Morocco 0,000011
18 Burkina Faso 0,000010
19 Egypt 0,000010
20 Lesotho 0,000008

- I have no idea why Djibouti and the Western Sahara do so well in this list. My only guess for Djibouti is that there is a USA military army base in Djibouti and that all their kids are Last.fm addicts (why not!)
- Seychelles is the winner now, mainly because there are only 80.000 people living there.
- Cape Verde is doing well on Last.fm not because they like music a lot over there, but because their economy is doing well. The same is the case for Mauritius.

In general listening habits of african users seem te be pretty middle of the road (Muse, Radiohead)but there are some exceptions:

Hoba Hoba Spirit are popular in Morocco and play a Mano Negra and Mau Mau like cheerful pop music. Free MP3 on their page!
Chico Buarqueis popular in Cape Verde.
Amr Diab is doing well in Egypt.

Events list can be found on country pages of South Africa and Senegal. The most virtual and lonelyevent takes place in Burkina Faso.(Ban these folks!)