Africa’s Transformative Narrative Part 2: Social Media

 “I think the Internet is absolutely extraordinary. It's very, very useful and I think one of the things we've got to do is make sure that the African continent gets on to that information super highway. We've got to access this modern technology. I've been saying, for instance, if you put in this infrastructure, you're able then to deliver tele-medicine to a village. In reality, this technology is most useful for poor countries” -- Thabo Mbeki, ex-President of South Africa in a Conversation with BBC News Online Users in 2000

Back in 2011 when Facebook had just 25 million users in Africa, socialbakers.com (Facebook’s analysis site) identified Africa as Facebook’s fastest growing market already. Currently, the social media company has close to 52 million users in the whole continent. This number keeps growing daily as more and more people in the continent move up the income ladder and are able to buy both dumb and smart phones that can access the internet or even just upgrade on the current smart phone, tab or pad that they have. And that is just one of the prominent pictures that Africa has been able to paint for itself as far as Social media is concerned. The continent is receptive to cheaper, faster and secure mobile telephony and mobile phone entertainment products that puts it on the same level as other societies on the real and virtual world. The current 52 million Facebook users in Africa translates to just 5% of the continent’s population. Recently, Facebook again announced that it sees Africa as the market with the largest growth potential compared to other markets.

According to a report that was conducted and released by Portland Communications’ Kenya office in the last three months of 2011 titled How Africa Tweets, South Africa is the continent’s most active country by volume of geo-located Tweets and takes second place (after Egypt) in the Top 10 of African countries on Facebook (with just over 9.4-million active users). Not surprisingly, the country’s political parties have not been slow to take to social media to convince voters to buy whatever it is they were selling this election season (South Africa’s general elections were held on May 7 to elect a new National Assembly and new provincial legislatures in each province). The streets were still plastered with posters and politicians were still handing out the usual food packages and t-shirts, but to this they added Twitter ‘Town hall meetings’ (the DA started doing this 2 years ago), Facebook Q&As and political debates, and Google Hangouts. The growing amount of African subscribers has prompted Facebook to more specifically cater to the expanding African market by starting to roll-out local language versions of the website, beginning with Swahili.

Unlike Facebook that was in its initial stages filled with mostly youth, Twitter attracted mainly the grown up persons and professionals mostly because of their ability to offer concise (140 characters) analytical perspective on things that happen across the continent. However, the number of youth who have Twitter accounts has significantly increased over the past four years due to a number of factors that are all dependent on the affordability of mobile phones to even the unemployed population and an increase in literacy and global awareness levels. It is this kind of transformation that defines the new African on the global stage. The How Africa Tweets report brought to light the trends and behaviors of Africa’s Twitter residents and visitors who have propelled Twitter in Africa to fast become an important source of information on a continent with few guarantees of press freedom.

Even politicians are taking note of this development and have started opening Social Media accounts with President Uhuru Kenyatta (@UKenyatta) clocking more than 418K followers having sent more than 2,510 tweets. President Kagame (@PaulKagame), who now stands at 2,383 tweets and 365K followers (and whose Twitter strategy appears to follow his political one in that his account follows exactly 0 tweeters).  Also, seeing as it is never too late to join the party, President Museveni (@KagutaMuseveni) sent his first tweet on April 24^th last month and boasts 30K followers with just nine tweets. He too, follows no one. The use of Social media played a major part in Kenyatta’s win at the presidential polls in Kenya last year and also influenced as was predicted other elections too like in South Africa this month.

Portland Communications’ Kenya office revealed three years ago in the report just how active the continent’s social media users were on Twitter, too. In Africa, Twitter has in the past half decade become a virtual meeting point for intellectuals, professionals, analysts, students, normal ordinary African folk and even comedians to just log in to have a conversation that “trends” throughout the country, region, continent and globally about a subject that is most of the time being critiqued harshly (condemnation and scorn)  or just lightly (comical strips with memes and word play), applauded or even just addressing something personal like an achievement or challenge on your timeline that then other people pick up to trigger an online conversation.

In the report, Africa's biggest economy, South Africa, generated the most tweets with over 5m, more than double second placed Kenya's 2.48m. Then came Nigeria (1.67m), Egypt (1.21m) and Morocco (0.75m). The average age of African tweeters is between 20 and 29 years old, compared to the worldwide average of 39 years old. Some 57% of tweets from Africa are sent from mobile devices, including BlackBerrys and iPhones. Twitter is widely used for social conversation, with four in five of those polled saying they mainly used it for communicating with friends. But more than two in three of those polled said they use Twitter to monitor news. More than one in four uses it to search for job opportunities.

The projected impact of social media in Africa, and more specifically Facebook and Twitter is growing fast such that in a report titled Social Media in Africa released by Deloitte in 2012, analysts write that mobile telephony and social media may rid Africa of tyranny. The positive take up of mobile telephony and social media has catapulted Africa into a new digital dimension that has skipped the reliance on desktops and P.Cs as it was in most developed countries.

Apart from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, a multitude of other social networks are growing in popularity and have the potential to draw new users online. African social networks popular in Africa include hi5, MXit, AfricanZone, EastAfricanTube, NaijaBorn, Sembuse, Afrigator, Zoopy and AfricanPlanet just to mention a few.

All this transformation has been propelled by the success of mobile technology and telephony in Africa. The gadget is portable, with an easier interface than a PC (for the large number of technology illiterate people in Africa)   and is relatively affordable to maintain (of course depending on how much you use it). The continent has taken up the mobile phone and used it to not only better communication but has also innovated ways of adopting mobile technology in areas like commerce, education, agriculture and security. The future of mobile telephony and social media use is only brighter considering Africa’s youth bulge and projected economic growth that then translates to more smart phones and better salaries that will make mobile telephony cheaper for more people. The take up of social media use by other industries like business, marketing and media as a way of creating employment opportunities for business and professional social media account specialists and also as a way engaging and interacting with clients has also propelled the transformation of Africa using social media.

The role and impact of social media in advocacy and the reform process also manifested itself clearly in 2010 during the start of the Arab Spring where demonstrations and revolts communicated through Facebook and Twitter in the Arab World and awareness was raised in the face of state attempts at repression and internet censorship.

As a means to leverage this interest in social media– telephony makers in Africa are promoting and developing their products with features branded to Facebook, Twitter and other apps like Wats App and Instagram. It is estimated that over 80% of Facebook log ins in Nigeria and South Africa are from some form of mobile device. For example, Ghana’s mobile network operator, Tigo is offering a mobile device, appropriately named the “Facebook Phone”, with a feature that gives users quick access to the social network. To date, the full potential of digital communications in Africa has been limited by hardware. A large population of the African continent cannot afford smart phones that are the most efficient in social media use with mobile phones.