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Which African city Tweets the most?

A new map shows the tweets sent out from Africa’s 20 most populated cities, in the period of 24 hours. Geo-located tweets were tracked over the last three months of 2013 to determine the trends. Coming in number one is Johannesburg with 344,215 geo-located tweets. The top five include Ekurhuleni (264,172); Cairo (227,509); Durban (163,019); and Alexandria (159,534).

The findings should not come as too much of a surprise. English, French and Arabic are the predominant languages and the highest level of activity took place on the day that Nelson Mandela died. Analysis comes from a business perspective for the Nairobi-based Portland Communications, the group that carried out the analysis.

Football (not the American kind) was the most discussed topic. Politics did not fare so well, but brands seem to be making some gains.

“The African Twittersphere is changing rapidly and transforming the way that Africa communicates with itself and the rest of the world. Our latest research reveals a significantly more sophisticated landscape than we saw just two years ago. This is opening up new opportunities and challenges for companies, campaigning organisations and governments across Africa,” said Allan Kamau, Head of Portland Nairobi, in a release.

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About Author

Tom Murphy

Tom Murphy is a New Hampshire-based reporter for Humanosphere. Before joining Humanosphere, Tom founded and edited the aid blog A View From the Cave. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, GlobalPost and Christian Science Monitor. He tweets at @viewfromthecave. Contact him at tmurphy[at]humanosphere.org.