Last year’s Arab Spring uprising showed that social networking in general and Twitter in particular does have a role to play as an important and effective communication tool on the African continent. Now, new research entitled How Africa Tweets, launched by independent consultancy firm Portland Communications attempts to sketch an image of the use of Twitter in Africa.

Portland along with media platform Tweetminster have analysed more than 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 complemented by a survey of 500 of Africa’s most active tweeters.

How Africa Tweets found that:

South Africa is the continent’s most active country in terms of volume, with over twice as many tweets (5 030 226) during Q4 2011 as Kenya (2 476 800), which is the next most active African country. Rounding off the top five is Nigeria (1 646 212), Egypt (1 214 062) and Morocco (745 620).

The study found that 57% of tweets from Africa are sent from mobile devices, with the majority (60%) of Africa’s most active Tweeters aged between 20 and 29. Twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation, as 81% of those polled said that they mainly used it for communicating with friends.

However, the popular micro-blogging site is also becoming an important source of information in Africa, with 68% of those polled stating that they use the site to monitor news, whilst 22% utilise 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 stated: “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 further revealed 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.

Beatrice Karanja, associate director and head of Portland Nairobi said: “We saw the pivotal role of Twitter in the events in North Africa last year, but it is clear that Africa’s Twitter revolution is really just beginning. 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.”

 

In related news Twitter is looking to curtail the spread of malware via its popular social networking site, by recently revealing its acquisition of web security company Dasient.