New research reveals how Africa Tweets

In the first ever attempt to comprehensively map the use of Twitter in Africa, Portland 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 Twitters.

 How Africa Tweets  says that South Africa  makes up the largest number of tweets with over 5 million tweets followed by  Kenya,Nigeria,Egypt and Morocco. It says 58 percent of tweets are from mobile devices and  60 percent of Africa's tweeters are  aged 20-29. Of those polled 81 per cent said they used twitter for social communication and 68 per cent said that they used it to keep track of the news.Some 22 per cent used it in job searches. They use >Google +,Facebook Youtube and Linkedin.  

Business and political leaders, however, were largely absent from Twitter. A spokesmen said that government, businesses and development agencies could not afford  not to use Twitter as it grows as a communiction medium in Africa.

Portland hopes that this survey will serve as a bench mark for Twitter use in Africa