By John Mokwetsi
I stumbled upon a report entitled How Africa Tweets by Portland Communications and Tweetminster that analysed over 11.5 million geo-located Tweets originating on the continent during the last three months of 2011.
According to the report following a survey of 500 of Africa’s most active Tweeters, South Africa is the continent’s most active country by volume of geo-located Tweets, with over twice as many Tweets (5,030,226 during Q4 2011) as the next most active Kenya (2,476,800). Nigeria (1,646,212), Egypt (1,214,062) and Morocco (745,620) make up the remainder of the top five most active countries.
In Southern Africa, countries like Namibia and Angola have some minimal active tweeting community and countries like Malawi, Tanzania, Botswana and Zimbabwe are not mentioned showing an apathy in the use of the this online social networking service and microblogging service.
Encouraging though is the fact that 60% of Africa’s most active Tweeters are aged 20-29 itself the generation that needs to be engaged in national discourse as potential future leaders.
The disappointing factor is that the report reveals that twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation, with 81% of those polled saying that they mainly used it for communicating with friends leaving me wondering if the golden generation is engaging in nation building issues.
All is not lost though as the same report makes a case that Twitter is becoming an important source of information in Africa. 68% of those polled said that they use Twitter to monitor news. 22% use it to search for employment opportunities.
African Twitter users are active across a range of social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.
But what about opinion maker, our leaders, whose proximity to the grassroots is only from the bullet proof top of the range cars where they wave uncontrollably to bemused people in all forms of tattered clothes waving back?
Mark Flanagan, Portland’s Partner for Digital Communications, says: “One of the more surprising findings of this research is that more public figures have not joined Africa’s burgeoning Twittersphere. With some notable exceptions, we found that business and political leaders were largely absent from the debates playing out on Twitter across the continent. As Twitter lifts off in Africa, governments, businesses and development agencies can really no longer afford to stay out of a new space where dialogue will increasingly be taking place.”
PM Morgan Tsvangirai with a following of only 1436, maybe a reflection of Twitter apathy in Zimbabwe, has only tweeted 20 times in three months.
Well maybe Beatrice Karanja, Associate Director and head of Portland Nairobi,articulates it better when she says: “We saw the pivotal role of Twitter in the events in North Africa last year, but it is clear that Africa’s Twitter revolution is really just beginning.”
True, Twitter is not catching on in Zimbabwe fast enough. I do admire how David Coltart uses it though. He's one public figure who's really doing his thing and creating a personal face through his tweets.
ReplyDeleteI want to challenge something, however. You say most Twitter users only tweet for social reasons, with little discussion of significance taking place. I feel that many of the 'social' conversations that people have reveal their political ideologies and stances... The social route is usually the easiest way to get people to discuss serious issues. This has to be tapped into and exploited, particularly to get young people to enter political discourse.
Thanks for your view and comment Fungai; but what is your take on the fact that scholarly views on new media posits that new technologies does not allow for serious political discourse and it is often failing in its attempt to recreate the public sphere. Although some agree that it has helped shape political views it falls short of being the total empowering tool and might actually be hurting that prospect. In fact twitter to some is a fragmentation of discourses that fail to advance democracy and are with commonality that works for us as human offline.
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