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Who Tweets Most In Africa And What Do They Talk About?

Who Tweets Most In Africa And What Do They Talk About?

Egypt was the most active African nation on Twitter in 2015, with 450 million tweets, according to a report released on April 6, 2016 by Portland Communications, an integrated company based in London, United Kingdom.

This came barely five years after the micro-blogging site was blocked in the North-African nation in 2011, after Egyptians took to the streets during the Arab Spring that started in neighboring Tunisia.

According to Mail & Guardian Africa, the report, ‘How Africa Tweets’, is published annually and it analyses Twitter trends, hashtags and online habits in African countries.

It put Nigeria in second place with 350 million tweets, South Africa (325 million), Kenya (76 million) and Ghana with 65 million tweets.

Africans used the online social platform to pre-dominantly talk about politics.

The report showed that 10 percent of the total tweets in Africa were about politics, more than the United States and United Kingdom where political conversations only made up one to two percent of hashtags in 2015.

Since 2012, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia and Burundi led in political conversations on Twitter. These nations have experienced increased political activity since 2011 the Arab revolution hit Egypt, while Nigeria, Burundi and Ethiopia had their presidential elections.

According to BBC, Twitter has been used in African nations to talk about major political events that have happened across the continent.

The hashtag, #NigeriaDecides, was used by Nigerians during the presidential elections in March 2015. #Jan25 was used in Tunisia and Egypt when the Arab revolution started in 2011.

The dominant hashtag in the continent was #FeesMustFall, which started in South Africa as a student-led movement to protest against the rising cost of higher education in Africa’s second biggest economy.

The hashtag spread to other nations and Egypt led with 700,000 mentions while South Africa was second with about 160,000 mentions.

English was the most dominant language on Twitter with about 77 percent of the tweets in 2015.