Nigeria, South Africa Lead On 'Geo-located' Tweets ' Research

YOUNG people tweeting from mobile devices are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa, according toHow Africa Tweets, new research launched in Nairobi during the week.In the first ever attempt to comprehensively map the use of Twitter in Africa, Portland Communications and Tweetminster 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.How Africa Tweetsfound that:'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 per cent of Tweets from Africa are sent from mobile devices.'60 per cent of Africa's most active Tweeters are aged between 20 and 29.' Twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation, with 81 per cent of those polled saying that they mainly used it for communicating with friends.' Twitter is becoming an important source of information in Africa. 68 per cent of those polled said that they use Twitter to monitor news. 22 per cent use it to search for employment opportunities.'African Twitter users are active across a range of social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.How Africa Tweetsfound 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.Portland Communications hopes that this survey will serve as a benchmark for measuring the evolution of Twitter use in Africa, shedding new light on how Africa communicates nationally, regionally and internationally. We welcome feedback and comments.
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