Africa’s kings of Twitter (in yellow spots)
YESTERDAY the communications agency Portland released its second “How Africa Tweets” report.
The report studied “geo-located” tweets during the last three months of 2013.
For us humble folk, geo-located means our mobile phones or computer have an active thingy that makes it possible to locate exactly where we are using it from it…e.g. in Yamoussoukro, Cote d’Ivoire.
The Portland people found that the six most Twitter-active African cities are, from the top: Johannesburg, then Ekurhuleni (many people hadn’t heard of it before, but it is a little place 34 kilometres from Johannesburg), Cairo, then back to South Africa (Durban), and back to Egypt (Alexandria), and then eastward to Nairobi.
Portland is lucky. This is Africa. If it had been a South African or Egyptian company, we would have rejected these results as being “tribally motivated”. But now that it isn’t we can’t, we have to try and make sense of them.
Traffic jams in Africa are the secret friends of social media
I am as confused as anyone else out there, but that will not stop me from trying. The surest evidence that I am clueless about the meaning of the “How Africa Tweets” report, is that I came away with the impression that it is somehow significant that top tweeting African cities are in coastal nations, though not all the cities themselves (e.g. Nairobi and Johannesburg) are on the coast.
I am not sure about the rest of the world, but in Africa I have always been of the view that our coastal nations tend to be more broadminded because they spend a lot of time looking out to the seas and oceans, wondering what lies beyond the watery expanses. We Africans are not water people, so our response to seas is uneven. Many coastal nations get terrified by it all and shrink into small-mindedness – like Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 1990s. Others get excited and develop wanderlust (and a bit of piracy) like the Somalis, or a very global world outlook like the Nigerians.
The general effect, from my sense of things, is that coastal nations tend to be more internationalist in terms of embracing the world. Hinterland ones on the other hand tend to be integrationist, cuddling up to their neighbours so that they can have access to the coast (as Rwanda and Uganda do with Kenya). In all, then, to the extent that tweeting requires a global mindset, in Africa the coastal nations will always come out on top.
The other surprise is, as the report put it, “football is the most-discussed topic on Twitter in Africa. During Q4 2013, football was discussed more than any other topic, including the death of Nelson Mandela”.
If you live in Nairobi, as I do, this is almost impossible to believe. That the main menu in African Twittterdom is sports, and not politics seems truly remarkable. It also speaks to the other thing that has puzzled many people; how come Lagos, or another city from Nigeria, by far Africa’s most populous and voluble nation, is not in the top ranks?
My uneducated guess is that if sports is the main traffic driver in Africa, then whether a country has a hotly contested local football league or not, will predict its Twitter rankings. And the most competitive leagues in Africa, which are occasionally fought with stones, knives and guns among the fans after matches end, are in Egypt and South Africa.
Granted, yes, the English Premier League is a big deal in Africa. But what happens in Kampala after a match between Manchester United and Arsenal, in which the Gunners beat currently hapless ManU 0-3, for example? The fans will exchange insults and mock each other for three hours, and by the following morning all is forgotten.
Local football enmities, on the other hand, never burn out and are often passed on from father to son. Thus after a match between Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates, the feud over the game to run on for weeks and generate copious among of tweets.
Orlando Pirates: No one fires up the South African Twittersphere like they do
I remember some years ago holidaying with the family in South Africa. Football season was at its peak. The friend who drove us around had scarves and badges of different teams in the car. And on two occasions, when we were entering a football territory where a particular football club loyalty was insurance against attack or theft, he got out of the car and swiped the stickers. So again, there Twitter is a useful social statement.
I will end with the finding that Twitter activity rises steadily through the afternoon and evening, with peak volumes around 10pm. Could it be that Africans are heavy-fingered in the morning? Maybe, as some chaps have suggested, we are busy working in the morning, then begin to laze off as the day grows older.
But that would not explain why we would peak at 10pm. You know, by that time, we are at the pubs, watching football, and evening soaps. And for parents, there is the children’s homework to supervise.
Perhaps it is not a mystery, at all. Little that is worth tweeting about – except if you want to take revenge on your partner – happens between 10pm and 7am when we set off to work. So there is nothing much to say in the morning, and yes, there is work to do.
But that can’t be all. I suspect that because a lot of tweeting is done on mobile phones, we usually run out of airtime by 10pm and wait until we have gone to the ATM or something like that to juice up – which happens during the coffee break and lunch.
By midday frustrations are beginning to build up. You checked your bank balance and found you had no money. Your boss has rejected your application for a salary advance. In addition, some events have come to pass – the reports of a horrific accident that killed 35 came through the news. You have watched a live broadcast of the Parliamentary debates and have pulled your hair out.
With airtime topped up, you now enter the maddening evening traffic jam. You begin venting in traffic. You get home and it is quiet – or very noisy. You are either lonely, or don’t like the sight of your wife, hubby, girlfriend or BF. You take to Twitter in solace. That peak you see at 10pm? That is the Grand Africa Misery Index.
Filed under: Rogue Stuff Tagged: Africa Misery Index, African cities, Alexandria, Cairo, coastal nations, Durban, Egypt, Ekurhuleni, football, global outlook, How Africa Tweets, Johannesburg, Kenya, Mamelodi Sundowns, Nairobi, Nigerians, Orlando Pirates, Portland, Somalis, South Africa, traffic jam, Twitter
