With 1,646,212, volumes of geo-located Tweets in the last three months of 2011, Nigeria is one of the five most active countries on online interactions in Africa; a research study has revealed.
According to ‘How Africa Tweets’, a new research launched in Nairobi recently, the high number of young people Tweeting from mobile devices are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa.
Reacting to the development, the Managing Director of Mate Network Limited, a business solution consulting firm, Mr. Anyi Onuga, advocated for the need for consumers in Nigeria and shop owners to buy into online transactions to save cost and time.
Onuga, who pointed out that the country’s positive respond to social media would ease online transactions, added that online transactions would further help consumers to suppress the ripples effect of the high cost of petroleum.
“Though it is cheering news that Nigeria is among the leading countries on the social media, it will not bring the expected economic activity if online transactions are not encouraged. CBN is implementing cashless society in Nigeria this year, Lagos is a pilot and it has kicked off there in January 2012.
“Considering the fact that more organisations are tilting to cashless transactions – POS, online, E-Pay solutions, it will do us a lot of good to turn the opportunity we have as a result of our presence on various social networks to business,”.
Meanwhile, the latest report has further indicated that in the first ever attempt to comprehensively map the use of Twitter in Africa, Portland Communications and Tweetminster analysed over 11.5 million geo-located Tweets originating on the continent during the last three months of 2011. This pan-African analysis of Twitter traffic was said to be complemented by a survey of 500 of Africa’s most active Tweeters.
Going further, the report stated that the researchers found out that “South Africa is the continent’s most active country by volume of geo-located Tweets of 5,030,226, which is over twice as many Tweets during the period under review. Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco recorded 2,476,800; 1,646,212; 1,214,062; and 745,620 respectively”.
The report also discovered that Twitter is becoming an important source of information in Africa as 68 per cent of those polled said that they use Twitter to monitor news, while 22 per cent use it to search for employment opportunities.
African Twitter users are said to be active across a range of social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.
Portland’s Partner for Digital Communications, Mark Flanagan, was quoted as saying that: “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.”
How Africa Tweets found that Twitter is helping to form new links within Africa. The majority of those surveyed said that at least half of the Twitter accounts they follow are based on the continent.
Recent Comments