#AfricaTweets: South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria Dominate Twitter Traffic in Africa

A new research by Portland (a communication research firm) indicates that users in Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco tweets most. The research titled How Africa Tweets and released today shows that most users of Twitter in Africa access it from a mobile phone (57%) while the 20 – 29 years age group dominate the social media site.

The data was collected by Portland and Tweetminster analysing 500 most active Twitter accounts in Africa. The study found that;

• South Africa is the continent’s most active country by volume of geo-located Tweets, with over twice as many Tweets (5,030,226 during Q4 2011) as the next most active Kenya (2,476,800). Nigeria (1,646,212), Egypt (1,214,062) and Morocco (745,620) make up the remainder of the top five most active countries.
• 57% of Tweets from Africa are sent from mobile devices.
• 60% of Africa’s most active Tweeters are aged 20-29.
• Twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation, with 81% of those polled saying that they mainly used it for communicating with friends.
• Twitter is becoming an important source of information in Africa. 68% of those polled said that they use Twitter to monitor news. 22% use it to search for employment opportunities.
• African Twitter users are active across a range of social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Mark Flanagan, Portland’s Partner for Digital Communications, says:

“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.”

Check the infographic below