Opera has announced it is celebrating 15 years on the African continent. The company says it enjoys over 150 million monthly active users on the continent as it provides better connectivity through its data-light Opera Mini browsers. To mark the celebration, the company is asking users to share their experiences with Opera Mini and the most memorable 150 entries will each get 150GB of free data.

Details on the Opera giveaway:

The competition opens on 15^th December and closes 15^th January.
To enter, simply like and comment Opera’s post on Facebook or Instagram, using #CelebrateWithOpera and explain why the company is important to you.
The terms & conditions for participation are available here.

Opera says in the fifteen years, they’ve experienced significant growth in users on the continent. Excluding Google Chrome, the company has risen to capture the highest brand awareness of all browsers.

The company says that in Kenya alone:

93% are familiar with Opera Mini, and 87% say that it is easy to use.
So far in 2021, Opera Mini has been downloaded 13 million times from Google Play, showing over 30% growth YoY in Kenya.
In 2021, the company offered Kenyans over 3 million GB of free data together with leading telecom partners to accelerate Kenya’s digital revolution
In 2021, Kenyan users saved approximately $3.5 million USD or over 395 million KES through free data campaigns, allowing them to surf their favorite sites: Facebook, FlashScore and Google, and experience moments of connection faster, for longer.

The data giveaway comes as the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare deep-seated regional inequalities in internet access. According to Statista, currently, only 39% of Africa has internet access, compared with 60% globally. High data costs are a primary constraint. According to Cable.co.uk, the price of mobile data in Sub-Saharan Africa is the most expensive in the world, with an average cost of $6.44 per 1 GB of mobile data. This is in stark contrast to Western Europe, where the same amount of mobile data is a third of the cost ($2.47).

For some African families, data takes up a significant share of household income, with 1 GB costing up to 16% of a monthly salary in some areas. According to the State of the mobile 2019 report by Opera, In Kenya, an individual can expect to be paying 3 US dollars per GB: 50% more than in Nigeria, twice as much as in Ghana, and ten times more than in India.

Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile said: “At Opera, we know the power that connection can bring. From sharing ideas, art and culture to kick-starting businesses or bringing loved ones closer together, data is essential to connecting people. Our mobile browser Opera Mini uses only one-tenth of the data that others do, and we’re proud to continue helping millions of people overcome connectivity barriers with our solutions.”

Opera says its data giveaway competition marks the beginning of ambitious plans to accelerate the right to internet access. Building on its commitment to help people get online. The company promises to roll-out a series of impact projects in 2022 to continue to address data inequity and connect the unconnected.