In the first ever attempt to comprehensively map the use of Twitter in Africa, Nigeria ranks 3rd behind Kenya and South Africa by volume in tweets. This research was conducted recently by Portland and Tweetminster when they 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 complemented by a survey of 500 of Africa’s most active Tweeters.
Some of the other notable findings are listed below.
- 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.
The information was presented in a release on Portland’s website this morning and more information can be found in a presentation here.