President Muhammadu Buhari has been ranked as the most followed Sub-saharan African leader on Twitter with 3,121,169 followers.
This is according to Burson Cohn and Wolfe (BCW), a global communications agency, in its recently released 2020 Twiplomacy findings.
The study noted that Muhammadu Buhari, the president of Nigeria is by far the most followed Sub-Saharan African leader with 3,121,169 followers ahead of Paul Kagame the President of Rwanda with 1,910,159 followers.
“Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, has seen the biggest growth over the past year more than doubling his followers reaching 1,386,849”.
The Twiplomacy study noted that for the fourth year running, U.S. President Donald Trump was the most followed world leader on Twitter, with 81.1 million followers on his @realDonaldTrump account which has grown by 33 percent year-over-year as well as the most effective world leader on Twitter since each one of his tweets garners on average 24,000 retweets which is slightly better than Saudi King Salman who garners 23,573 retweets per tweet.
According to the report, as of June 1, all 1,089 personal and institutional Twitter accounts of world leaders had a combined total of more than 620 million followers.
The BCW’s Twiplomacy report also noted that Coronavirus was the most tweeted topic by world leaders.
Commenting, Chad Latz, Chief Innovation Officer at BCW, said that Coronavirus had been the main topic on Twitter for the past three months.
Latz said that due to the worldwide lockdown, Twitter had seen increased interest, noting that it was vital for world leaders to reach out to followers using the channel to spread critical health warnings and keep them abreast of the latest COVID-19-related information.
“As the pandemic abates in some countries, world leaders will find themselves with an expanded audiences for future engagement, “Latz said.
Most Active World Leaders on Twitter
The Presidency of El Salvador is the most active organisation, sending more than 100 tweets per day. The governments of Guatemala and the Foreign Ministry of Venezuela are not far behind with more than 90 tweets per day.
