This interesting infographic shared by Portland Communications reveals a lot of shocking details about Twitter activity in Africa. Data was collected from geo-tagged tweets between the 3-month period of October and December, 2013. None of Nigeria’s major cities is among the top 3 (Johannesburg, Cairo and Nairobi) with the highest Twitter activity. And probably as surprising; none of the most used hashtags originated from Nigeria. Nigeria is represented at some level though; among the most tweeted native languages are Zulu, Swahili, and Hausa.
The easiest excuse in favour of Nigerians is that broadband penetration is not as good as in any of the top 3 cities. Not a fact to proudly admit, but still is the reality. Internet access is still majorly a thing for the privileged. The thing is, one would at least expect a city like Lagos to represent. Accra did better than Lagos.
I think this infographic should be taken with a grain of salt though. For one, only geo-tagged data was analysed. It’s possible Nigerians are more conscious of their privacy than others. I know I never geo-tag my tweets, I can’t speak for other Nigerians. Also, while I don’t have the exact statistics, I believe Nigerians are still the most travelled Africans. You can’t ignore the possibility that Nigerians are reasonably represented in those top 3 cities. Nevertheless, this should serve as a wake up call to Nigerians that all of Africa does not necessarily revolve around us. You can view the full infographic here
