Most followed on Twitter as JK pulls out

Zitto Kabwe, 38: The king of Twitter in Tanzania, is member of parliament for Kigoma North and chairman of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee with 219,000 followers. 

By Esther Mngodo,The Citizen Reporter

In Summary

Top Twitted in E. Africa

• Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta
• RwandanPresident Paul Kagame
• Uganda’s businessman Ashish J. Thakkar

Dar es Salaam. President Jakaya Kikwete’s account has been de-....................
activated, leaving his 233,000 followers high and dry. In Africa, it seems, it is not presidents or politicians who rule the twitter league. It is celebrities and businessmen.

Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to post 140-character long messages called “tweets”. Registered users can read and post tweets but the unregistered can only read them.

Buoyed by the surging number of mobile phones and internet penetration in Africa in the past few years, twitter has become one of the preferred quick means of communication. During the famous Arab Spring, it became the voice of the masses.

Realising this power, some African leaders, businessmen and women, celebrities and religious leaders have joined twitter to get access to a bigger audience, especially youth.

President Kikwete joined the twitter empire in March 2011. He is one of the few African leaders who understands the potential of social networks as a tool to reach out to the people. His tweets are mostly in Kiswahili and addressed national development, outlined government programmes and publicised ongoing or completed projects. He passed the 50,000 followers mark on February 16, 2013.

According to a Sahan Journal survey in 2013, President Kikwete was one of the top 10 most followed African presidents, coming in at Number 6. Topping the list was South African President Jacob Zuma, who had more than 210,000 followers then.

Today, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame tops the list with more than 799,000 followers. In 2014, President Kikwete was placed twelfth among the top 20 Heads of State Social Media statistics released by Digital Media Awards.

Social media users on Twitter and Jamii Forum were caught offguard and have raised a wide range of reasons for closing the President’s account. “It must have been hacked,” someone said, with total confidence. Another user empathised with the president, exclaiming: “It is right to do what he wants. Leave him alone.”

But it is virtually mission impossible to ignore the man with the most followers in Tanzania--that is, until his account was closed, Mr Kikwete led the pack with more than 233,000 followers, says Maxence Melo, the founder of Jamii Forum and a digital security expert. Young firebrand politician Zitto Kabwe is now leading Tanzanians on the site, with over 221,000 followers. “I’m personally saddened by this,” Mr Melo said. “We wonder what has happened to him. He left without warning us and nothing has been heard of it since.”

Mr Melo has this to say about this powerful communication tool: “When people discuss issues online, they tag the president, believing that he will be made aware of the situation. It is also a way of demonstrating freedom of speech.”

Thousands of people who have been following President Kikwete do not know exactly why the account was suspended--and there has been no official communication on the matter. Government Spokesman Salva Rweyemamu is said to be accompanying President Kikwete on an official tour.

According to a Mail& Guardian Africa report--given Africa’s high-stakes and cut throat political arena, where the portrait of a president as a symbol of power still adorns business premises and public offices, African presidents were presumed to have suffered the most loss of visibility on social media in last week’s outage because they are the most influ

The Mail& Guardian Africa report, which looks at Africans with the most followers on Twitter--excluding companies and organisations--reveals that the attention of tweeting Africans is not on their political leaders but their musicians, comedians, models and sports stars. In East Africa, the most followed in the twitter league are  politicians--Presidents Kikwete, Kenyatta and Kagame and Mr Kabwe.

Kenya, Rwanda odd men out

The only African countries in which the president is the personality with the most followers on Twitter are Rwanda (Paul Kagame) and Kenya (Uhuru Kenyatta with 716,000 followers).

The African with the most followers on Twitter at 3.7 million is the Egyptian satirist and TV host, Dr Bassem Youssef. He is a former heart surgeon and hosts the hugely popular Al-Bernameg satirical news show. In 2013, he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

As statistics stand currently, Egyptians comprise nine of the top 10 most-followed Africans on Twitter--and that list is dominated by political activists, politicians and civil society leaders. That means Egyptians are the most wired and social media plays a crucial role in that society.

The one non-Egyptian who edges into the top 10 is not a musician, politician, model or footballer but a 20-year-old South African. He is Caspar Lee and has 2.32 million followers. He built his celebrity status entirely on the Internet, posting short videos on YouTube. His first video came in 2010 when he was 16. It was a funny video of himself in the bath speaking in an exaggerated South African accent. Today, his YouTube channel has 3.6 million subscribers and over 160 million video views. French-speaking Africa tweets much less than Arabic and English-speaking Africa does, perhaps not so much because of the language per se but because of relatively poor communications infrastructure in Francophone Africa.

But football stars there tend to dominate their respective countries’ most followed lists, including Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon (729,000), Didier Drogba of Cote d’Ivoire (521,000), Frederic Kanoute of Mali (213,000) and Emmanuel Adebayor of Togo (137,000).

In Liberia, two football stars are the most followed on Twitter--Ola John, who plays for Benfica in Portugal with 31,000 followers, and Darlington Nagbe with 12,000 followers.He plays for Portland Timbers in the US Major League Soccer.

The Opposition owns Tanzanian Twitterdom

Tanzania and Uganda stand out too. Tanzania is the only country to have an opposition politician as its most followed person on Twitter after President Kikwete’s account was deactivated. Mr Kabwe, 38, is the Kigoma North MP and has 219,000 followers. Mr Kabwe has tabled several damning reports in Parliament detailing high-level corruption in President Jakaya Kikwete’s administration--with the most important one being the Escrow scandal report.

Uganda stands out for having a businessman as its most followed personality on Twitter--Mr Ashish J. Thakkar--with 723,000 followers. Mr Thakkar’s family had to leave Uganda during the 1972 Asian expulsion by Idi Amin and he was born in Leicester in the United Kingdom in 1981. In the 1990s, his family returned to Africa--to Rwanda--only to flee because of the 1994 genocide. The family then settled once again in Uganda.

Additional report by Mail & Guardian Africa

ential individuals on the continent. But that is not so, says Twitter. The reality is the opposite.