It seems like the “digital” slogan on which President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto based their campaigns has born fruit; Uhuru has been ranked as Africa’s second most popular leader on Facebook in the World Leaders on Facebook report 2018.

According to the 2018 World Leaders on Facebookreport, Uhuru has 3.5 million followers on his Facebook page after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who had over 7.2 million followers.

Ghana’s President, Nana Akufo-Addo, comes in 3rd in Africa with approximately 1.6 million followers.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the most followed world leader on Facebook with 43.2 million followers on his personal page, more than Donald Trump’s 23.1 million followers.

Trump’s page however recorded the most “interactions” (204.9 million) over the past 14 months more than any other world leader on Facebook.

MOST LIKED PHOTOS ON FACEBOOK

World leaders mainly tend to share posts with photos, accounting for 52 percent of all their Facebook publications.

Modi  also takes the crown for posting the five most like photos in Facebook in 2017. The photos include a picture of Modi receiving a bicycle from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

The picture of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi praying at the 11th century Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar, East India has become the most popular photo shared by a world leader in 2017 with a total of 1.2 million interactions and 1.1 million likes.

The government of Ethiopia posted the highest number of pictures,11,498, since January 1, 2017.

THE WORLD LEADERS ON FACEBOOK 2018

The World Leaders on Facebook study was conducted by Burson Cohn & Wolfe, a global communications agency and has analysed 650 pages  Facebook pages of heads of state and government and foreign ministers from January 1, 2017.

According to the study, the pages have published a total of 536,644 posts which have garnered close to 900 million interactions Since January 1, 2017.

COMMUNICATION TOOL

The World Leaders on Facebook study study also observes that 91 percent of the 193 UN member states have a presence on Facebook.

Facebook is technically regarded as the largest country in the world with 2.2 billion monthly active users and leaders have embraced the platform to communicate and interact with their citizens.

“Over the past decade, Facebook has become the channel of choice for engaging potential voters during election campaigns,” The study observes.

Although most world leaders have embraced Facebook as a communication tool, the study notes that only a handful of world leaders manage their pages on their own, or post on their timeline themselves.

New Zealand’s new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen,Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen and Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong are said to be among the few leaders who make occasional personal posts on their pages.

The 2018 World Leaders on Facebook study analysed how;

• world leaders and governments connect with their citizens on the platform?
• world leaders are broadcasting to their constituents or interacting with their followers?
• world leaders respond to messages from their fans?
• world leaders connect with other governments by liking each other’s Facebook page?