Google Chrome has edged Mozilla Firefox to become Africa’s most used web browser, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is the biggest loser on the continent.

This is according to a global ‘browser wars’ report from web monitoring firm Pingdom, which says that 39% of internet users in Africa use Chrome, while 37% and 18% respectively utilise Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Pingdom says Firefox’s share of the African browser market has slid from 40% last year, when it occupied pole position. Internet Explorer use in Africa, meanwhile, has been the hardest hit, as its share of the continent’s web browser market has eroded from 29% in 2012.

To compile its report, Pingdom says it used web browsing usage share numbers from StatCounter, which are based on visitor statistics averaged from over three million websites. Pingdom further says that in August 2012, StatCounter’s global sample consisted of over 17.1 billion page views.

And Africa’s growing adoption of Chrome is indicative of a broader global user shift towards the Google web browser, as indicated by Pingdom’s statistics.

Chrome dominates the global web browser market with a 37% market share, while use of Internet Explorer and Firefox respectively stand at 30% and 21%. Use of Apple’s Safari browser is at 9% and Opera is at 1%.

Pingdom says that Chrome is the most popular browser in four out of six regions around the world: these areas being Africa, Europe, Asia and South America.

It is only North America and Oceania where Internet Explorer is hanging on narrowly to top positions with respective 39% and 33% market shares. Chrome, though, is hot on the heels of Internet Explorer’s in these regions, as the Google browser respectively has 28% and 29% market shares in these two parts of the world.

“It was only two years ago that Internet Explorer was the dominant browser in the world with about 45% of desktop usage. Today, its share is around 30% and falling,” says the Pingdom report.

“During the same period, Chrome and Safari are the only two browsers in the top five that have gained in popularity,” adds the report.

Other web browser trends observed by the report are that Google Chrome has “achieved a very high efficiency in keeping users’ browsers up to date.”

Pingdom says that within Chrome’s total global usage share of 37%, the latest version of this browser - 25.0 - is used by 33% of internet users worldwide.

However, Pingdom adds that Internet Explorer 10.0, released in August 2012, has yet to reach any ‘significant usage share’ worldwide as it only has a 1.6% global market share. This could be as a result of the browser being bundled with Windows 8, which was only unveiled last year, say Pingdom researchers.

“For now it seems like the flavor of the year is Google Chrome for a big chunk of users,” says Pingdom.

“This may change, but probably not anytime soon,” the firm concludes.