Are Facebook and Google inadvertently stifling African innovation?

Google and Facebook are at the forefront of a scramble to win over new African Internet users, offering freebies they say give a leg-up to the poor but which critics argue is a plan to lock in customers on a continent of 1 billion people. Africa’s Internet penetration will reach 50 percent by 2025 and there are expected to be 360 million smartphones on the continent by then, roughly double the number in the United States currently, Mckinsey Consultants data shows. Africa had 16 percent Internet penetration and 67 million smartphones in 2013. This growth is attracting interest from Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Wikipedia, which are striking deals with service providers such as Vodacom, MTN, Bharti Airtel and Safaricom to offer users free, or ‘zero-rated’ access to their sites and services. Facebook, through its Internet.org program, offers a stripped-down version of its social network and some other sites for free in what it says is an exercise to “connect the two thirds of the world that doesn’t have Internet access”.