Thumbs up as Uhuru Kenyatta tops Sub-Saharan Africa Twiplomacy index

President Uhuru Kenyatta has received a huge thumbs up in the first installment of 2016’s Twiplomacy index as he was listed as the most popular Sub-Saharan Africa leader on social media.

In a 2016 study published by Burson-Marsteller, Uhuru was ranked as one of the top Heads of State because of the 2,000,000 fans he has garnered on Facebook.

“Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta is the most popular leader in Sub-Saharan Africa with 2 million likes, ahead of John Dramani Mahama, the President of Ghana, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the foreign minister of Ethiopia, with more than 600,000 likes each,” read the study.

President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto branded themselves as a ‘digital’ duo when they were campaigning for the 2013 polls, promising to embrace information communication technology should they clinch the seat.

A global trend

Facebook has carved out a niche for itself as the world’s leading social media platform. With over 1.5 billion subscribers and a reported 1 billion active users globally, it has become a key component in organizational communication.

According to the Burson-Marsteller study, over 90% of the world’s governments gave an official Facebook page and only 24 countries have yet to set up a page on the network.

Commenting on the global trend, Burson-Marsteller Europe, Middle East and Africa CEO said that governments are increasingly gaining proficiency on the social platform.

“Governments are becoming savvier and more professional in the use of social media. An encouraging finding from this study is that, for governments, it seems that quality trumps quantity in terms of what they post,” said Galbraith.

While most leaders primarily use their social media platforms as a formal communications platform, they are increasingly becoming ‘more human’ in their posts.

““It is also very refreshing to see that successful politicians on Facebook behave just like any other Facebook user, sharing pictures of their home life, holidays and their children,” noted Galbraith.

U.S. President Barack Obama is the most popular world leader on Facebook with 46m likes on his Barack Obama campaign page. Obama is closely followed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with more than 31m fans on his personal Narendra Modi page and 10.1m fans on his institutional PMO India page, which is in third position.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi complete the top five list of the most popular world leaders with more than 5m likes each.