From the ReliefWeb office in the middle of the UN’s Africa headquarters in Nairobi it makes perfect sense that Kenya should once again be the top user base for ReliefWeb, surrounded as we are by all the leading UN agencies and NGOs, as well as, unfortunately, some of the biggest crises - drought in Ethiopia, civil strife and food insecurity in South Sudan, violence, displacement in the Central African Republic - to name but a few.
In addition, connectivity has significantly improved in Africa in the past few years, as indicated by the large number of users who access ReliefWeb from their mobile phones, while tablet use has declined commensurately.
If we look back at the period in review, in the first half of 2015 there were the devastating earthquakes in Nepal, which meant a big boost in users from Asia; this year those numbers fell back by 26.8 per cent. Figures for Africa and Europe were broadly stable, with a slight decline in usage from the Americas.
So, to get back to the top 10 user countries: Kenya is followed by the US, UK, France, Uganda, Japan, Ethiopia, Italy, South Sudan and Somalia, but the difference in numbers is striking - 4,546,502 page-views in Kenya, 3,863,101 in the US, 2,175,680 in the UK, whittling down to 747,033 in Somalia.
The vast majority of our users are young - in the 25-34 age bracket, followed by the 35-44 group - with slightly more women than men; the most popular report was the Global Peace Index 2016 from June this year, with 5,527 page views.
Ecuador (because of the earthquake in February), Pakistan’s monsoon preparations, floods and landslides in Sri Lanka, El Niño updates, South Sudan humanitarian needs and floods in India were among the other top 10 reports accessed in the first half of this year. This trend was reflected in the top three Disaster pages accessed: the Ecuador earthquake, drought in Ethiopia, and Sri Lankan floods; followed by the Sahel crisis, Southern Africa drought, the Mongolian Dzud, Fiji cyclone and Nepal earthquakes.
Syria, Yemen, and South Sudan - without a doubt the worst humanitarian crises recorded this year - topped the list of country pages accessed, with almost 40,000 page views for Syria, 37,482 for South Sudan and 20,321 for Yemen. The El Niño topics page was also popular, as was the Ecuador earthquake page, while the Video section showed healthy growth from a year ago.
See below the interactive infographic on the key analytics. The raw data can be accessed from here for more details.
As we approach the 20th year of the ReliefWeb project in a few months, we thank you - our end users and partners - for using our services. You can always reach us with your comments.