We joined Tech4Africa,  the largest tech conference in Africa which brings together different companies, innovators and start-ups that play crucial roles in Africa’s digital tech.

Currently, there are only 3 billion people who have access to the internet, which is just slightly over 40% of internet users globally. How to get the next billion online is one of the topics discussed in Tech4Africa.

The challenges include education, access to mobile devices and cost of infrastructure and mobile data. Efforts involving innovative solutions from different groups were presented.

As for Opera, we help people, with our free apps that compress data, meaning cheaper use of mobile data and a better online experience, even in bad network conditions.

Our compression is the key to bringing more people online

Over the past 20 years, we have been enabling more people to connect to the internet faster and efficiently without breaking the bank. Karin Greve-Isdahl, our VP for Communications, shared with the conference how our apps and services do this.

Super exited to be speaking at @Tech4Africa ab how to connect the next 1 bn people @opera pic.twitter.com/ohuEDihzBj

— Karin Greve-Isdahl (@kgisdahl) October 7, 2015

Our compression shrinks the size of text, photo and video data down before it is sent to the user’s mobile device. This saves precious mobile data on the go.

Our free app for Android, Opera Max, is a data-management and data-savings app that compresses most Android apps across the device. Opera Mini, our mobile browser for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and basic phones also compresses webpages.

Reaching over 5 million e-readers

Recently, through our partnership with Worldreader, we reached over 5 million readers of free e-books in Africa.

africaonlineTech4Africaworldreader

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