New research on Twitter activity on the African continent shows South Africans are the most prolific “tweeters”.
Portland Communications, together with Tweetminster, analysed over 11.5 million geo-located tweets from Africa over the last three months of 2011, while also conducting a survey among the continent's 500 most active Twitter users.
The researchers say “How Africa Tweets” is the first survey of its kind to be conducted on the continent, and they hope it will become a benchmark to measure growth and evolution of the service on the continent.
SA was well ahead of the other African countries when it came to tweets by volume with a measured 5 030 226 tweets during the fourth quarter of last year. Kenya came in second, with close to 2.5 million tweets, followed by Nigeria (1.6 million) and Egypt (1.2 million).
Portland says the top 20 African countries by tweet volume represent “70% of Africa's population, 85% of the continent's GDP and 88% of Africa's Internet users”.
The majority (60%) of active African tweeters are between the ages of 20 and 29, and over 57% of African tweets originate from mobile devices (dominated by BlackBerrys and iPhones).
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“Twitter is helping Africa and Africans to connect in new ways and swap information and views. And for Africa - as for the rest of the world - that can only be good.”
According to the survey, Africans use Twitter primarily to communicate with friends (81%) and to monitor news (68%). Those surveyed also said more than half of their connections on Twitter were from Africa.
The research, however, also highlighted a lack of public figures such as business and political leaders on the micro-blogging service. “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,” says Portland's partner for digital communications, Mark Flanagan.
The hashtag #AfricaTweets is being used to discuss the results of the research. To see the full infographic, click here.
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