​Kenyatta Most Followed President in Africa; Kagame Most Engaging on Twitter

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta is Africa’s most followed leader with 1.4 million followers, closely followed by Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and ahead of South Africa’s presidential administration which has 673,000 followers on Twitter according to Twiplomacy Study 2016.

Surprisingly, the Kenya President only follows five Kenyans from his personal twitter account @Ukenyatta: his wife (Margaret Kenyatta), Deputy President William Ruto, Ezekiel Kemboi and Manoa Esipisu.

His popularity might be related to his quest to ensure school children embrace digital learning from their early childhood education. During the Madarak Day celebrations he justified it as, “We’re not just giving them a device; we are opening a world of connection and innovation to the Kenyan child. In a few years, we will see an entire generation of Kenyans with the new skills they need to build a new Kenya.”

The Burson-Marsteller’s research findings state that, ‘Twitter is the social media channel of choice for governments and foreign ministries judging by the number of governments on the platform.’

In January, Kenyatta was ranked as the most popular president in Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of Facebook following. “Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta is the most popular leader in Sub-saharan Africa, with 2m likes ahead of John Dramani Mahama, the President of Ghana with 600,000 likes,” said the study.

This is followed by Facebook ‘where they have the biggest audience’. YouTube is third and Google+ competes the tier by being ranked fifth.

The findings report that, the ‘U.S. President Barack Obama is still the uncontested leader of the digital world. His @BarackObama Twitter account now has 75 million followers. He also leads the rankings on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google+.’

Pope Francis (@Pontifex) is the second-most followed world leader with more than 28 million followers on his nine language accounts.

In the findings however, in Africa, President Kagame was singled out as one who ‘converse with their followers.’ Rwanda’s President @PaulKagame is the second most conversational world leader with 81 percent of his tweets being @replies to other Twitter users. He is followed by the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo Mapon Matata.

Twiplomacy is the leading global study of world leaders on social media, conducted by leading global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller.

793 Twitter accounts of heads of state and government, foreign ministers and their institutions in 173 countries worldwide was analysed. The study analysed each leader’s Twitter profiles, tweet history, and their connections with each other.