President Kenyatta Named Africa’s Most Popular Leader on Twitter, Trump Leads Globally

A new survey has named President Uhuru Kenyatta as the most popular African leader on social media site Twitter.

The study, dubbed Twiplomacy, established that the Kenyan head of state is the most followed leader in the Sub Saharan Africa with more than three million followers on the micro-blogging platform.

The survey was carried out by Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW), an global communications agency. 

President Uhuru maintained the position from the last survey, where he ranked first position, despite losing followers in recent purge on fake account by the California- headquartered organization. Kenyatta lost 16,071 Twitter followers in the crackdown.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and his Nigerian counterpart Muhammadu Buhari are second and third positions most followed African leaders respectively with over 1 million followers.

United President Donald Trump is the most followed world leader with more than 53 million followers on Twitter. This is despite losing roughly 320,000 followers in the fake accounts crackdown.

Catholic leader, Pope Francis is the second most followed world leader with over 47 million followers, followed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with 42 million followers on his personal account and 26 million followers (fourth) on his institutional account.

@POTUS, the official page of US Presidency ranks fifth with 23 million, while @WhiteHouse ranks sixth with 17 million followers.

The study ranked Twitter as the most popular social network among government leaders, followed by Facebook and then Instagram.

“Social media has become a primary conduit of diplomacy,” said BCW Chief Innovation Officer Chad Latz.