One thing about Twitter? It shows that Africans are curious about the rest of the continent beyond their own countries
As the world’s soapbox, Twitter shows that conversations about Africa are not just limited to hard news. And that Africans are curious about the rest of the continent beyond their own countries. For example, the top 10 most popular hashtags in August. #Covid-19 trended in 49 countries, #Afrobasket2021 in 22 countries even though the tournament was held in Rwanda and political events like the Zambian elections and conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia also trended in many countries.
The top 10 trending hashtags also showed equal interest in hard news and entertainment content. The Taliban took over Afghanistan, including the government. Western embassies and the country’s president, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country – along with more than 12,000 Afghans. #Afghanistan trended in 38 countries, but not in Uganda. The country offered to host Afghan refugees and has already welcomed the first group of asylum seekers.
Uganda still had a political crisis in mind, with #TplfTerroristGroup as the top hashtag in the country. #TplfTerroristGroup trended in 12 countries and was inspired by the conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia where the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) is fighting with the Ethiopian military for political control. The crisis also inspired #TigrayGenocide and #UnityForEthiopia, which trended in 18 and 12 countries, respectively.
In other political news, businessman Hakainde Hichilema won 59% of the Zambian presidential vote, ousting Edgar Lungu from office. #ZambiaDecides2021 trended in 22 countries. #ZambiaDecides2021 also made the cut for top hashtags that inspired positive opinions and feels. #VaccinateBotswana shows how Batswana feel about Covid-19 vaccines and #BeachComberExperience was used by a travel brand in Mauritius. #TotalEnergiesAFCON trended in the West African country even though its national soccer team was kicked out of AFCON 2022 qualifying games.
#Bitcoin commanded conversations about money, trending in 22 countries. This reflects the growing popularity of digital currencies in Africa. Technology was also the inspiration behind the most liked Tweet, but it is not so future-forward. “Silicon Valley getting close to cracking the technologies of Ancient Egypt,” by @5fiveooh4four was liked by more than 300,000 accounts. It was related to a tweet about using clean technology to generate electricity.
Entertainment conversations were led by #BBNaija. The sixth season of Big Brother Nigeria started at the end of July. Naturally, where Nigerian entertainment leads, most of the continent follows. #BBNaija trended in 45 countries. Nollywood, the country’s movie industry and the second-largest globally, featured in the most liked picture of Africa shared on the platform. @chuuzus shared four pictures of Nollywood horror from a collection by Pieter Hugo. The tweet had more than 45,000 likes. One of them from @Africanofilter.
We love seeing content that showcases art and creativity in Africa. We also love seeing African excellence displayed on global stages, so we are excited to see African athletes make history at the Tokyo Olympics – an event that also had the attention of 44 countries through #Tokyo2020.
There was nothing light-hearted about @HantaWedi’s timeline. This Twitter user generated the highest number of tweets about Africa in August, with 1640 posts that were all related to Tigray, violence and human rights.
@zoomAfrika1 tweeted about 51 countries, making it the account that tweeted the most African countries in August. According to the bio, the account curates “beautiful places, people, tribes, lifestyles, news, fact and historical stories in Africa”.