KENYA: News that Kenyans are the second biggest users of Twitter is music to the ears of the nation's social media junkies, who say the site is fast becoming the communication tool of choice

Record ID: 362239

  • Title: KENYA: News that Kenyans are the second biggest users of Twitter is music to the ears of the nation's social media junkies, who say the site is fast becoming the communication tool of choice
  • Date: 15th February 2012
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF KENYAN SINGER SARAH MITARU SINGING AT SOCIAL MEDIA EVENT
  • Embargoed: 1st March 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Communications,Science / Technology
  • Reuters ID: LVA6EALTGSJZFAU1QDFN6EU22BE
  • Story Text: Its early morning at the community business networking centre, iHub in Kenya's capital Nairobi and the city's tech savvy Twitter users are already hitting cyber space.
    Tapping away on laptops, ipads, mobile phones and blackberries, they report what they see, hear and read to a virtual world of millions of dedicated followers all within the strict limit of 140 characters per post.
    Today is the re-launch of a website designed to help Kenyan citizens keep tabs on members of government, including rating MPs and reporting misdemeanours ahead of the upcoming general election.
    As the speakers talk from the iHub podium - a kind of coffee house-cum-workspace - the tweeters set about reporting what's being said.
    Kenyans are the second biggest users of Twitter in Africa, according to a recent report by the market research company Portland Group.
    According to the research Kenya produced 2.48 million tweets in the last three months of 2011, behind South Africa who produced around 5 million tweets in the same time. Nigeria was third with 1.67 million tweets.
    The report also found that 57 percent of tweets sent from Africa are from mobile phone devices and 60 percent of tweeters are aged between 20 and 29.
    A glance around the room at the iHub reveals twitter users here are from a wide range of backgrounds and use the medium for a range of reasons.
    "I started Tweeting I'd say about a year and a half ago and I started tweeting because everyone else was doing it and I thought it would be an effective way of gathering information first and then spreading it," said Rachel Gichinga, a Nairobi resident who works with youth to engage them in politics.
    Crystal Simeoni, self-confessed Twitter addict also says she started using the programme a year and half ago but has several identities she tweets under, reflecting the different roles she plays in life.
    Asked how much she tweets in a day she said: "That's hard to say, I'm always on twitter, on my computer, on my phone, its everywhere. I tweet with the organisation I work with, I work a lot with social media and culture so I tweet for them and I tweet for myself so I have like three different Twitter aps open at one time using different identities on there."
    Limo Taboi, an ex-banker and financial analyst has almost 8,000 followers in Kenya and abroad. Unlike some who use it as a way to promote themselves, Taboi likes to keep his Twitter identity under wraps and tweets financial gossip and market news.
    "It's mostly my life, previously as a banker and now as a share holder of a couple of companies. You know you find lots of people who are not very aware of how to interpret news in papers very many people don't read papers anymore and I find it lots of fun to read the hidden stuff in newspapers, in classifieds, going through the numbers of companies' results and making sense of it," said Taboi.
    Its Twitter potential as an engine for social and political change that has most caught the eye of commentators, who suggest its use in sub-Saharan Africa could encourage the kind of grass roots approach to political change seen in North Africa last year.
    John Githongo, Kenya's well-known anti-corruption whistleblower says the use of social networking sites to share ideas and spark discussion is changing the way people engage with politics in Kenya.
    "I think it's absolutely critical that Kenyans are now amongst the most intense users of Twitter and Facebook on the continent of Africa. Its changing the way we communicate with each other, it's changing our understanding of what government means and its moving us from a civil society to into a civic society where every person is empowered by these tools to enable them to engage with the government and its systems on their own," said Githongo.
    The Portland Group's report also revealed key information about the kind of trends Africans follow on Twitter, with 68 percent of those surveyed using the site to get news and 22 percent saying they use it to search for job opportunities.
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