REGIONAL REPORT Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V.

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA VERASHNI PILLAY

April 5, 2011 Befriending Voters And Arresting www.kas.de/media-africa Activists www.kas.de

A CLOSE LOOK AT THE DIGITAL MEDIA REVOLUTION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & Co.: For served as a powerful symbol of the frustra- trailing the path in modern political com- tions of millions. munication, Africa has been the place and 2011 the time. With the northern rim of The second was the technology available to the continent grabbing all the headlines those sympathetic to Bouazizi's course. so far, the time has come to cover digital Technology that multiplied a voice to a developments in Sub-Saharan Africa. The shout, that bypassed news gatekeepers to Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Regional Media reach its audience instantly, and was cheap Programme (KAS Media Africa) has joined and freely available. forces with Verashni Pillay, the deputy editor of the Mail & Guardian Online – one What traditional media could not do over of Africa’s leading news sites. Together, decades, social media did in a matter of we take a closer look at some selected weeks. territories across the region and explores if and how the new communication tools There is of course much debate over how promote, deepen, and advance democracy much of a role social networks have played in Subsaharan-Africa. This report under- in the popular uprisings in the Arab world lines KAS Media Africa’s commitment to since December. But few would disagree digital democratization – please also see with the fact that it was a major factor, par- our new web project “E-lection Bridge Af- ticularly in Egypt where the famous January rica” (www.kas.de/e-lectionbridge). 25th uprising was organised -- and popular- ised -- via social networks like Twitter and A man setting himself on fire is enough to Facebook, with Egyptian Google executive turn anyone's stomach. The echo of that Wael Ghonim instrumental in providing the man doing it repeatedly on thousands of necessary IT skills to help the movement screens is enough to start a series of revo- gain the momentum it did. lutions that could change a continent. The technology affected the language – and Tunisia's Mohamed Bouazizi wasn't the first humour – around the uprisings. People are person desperate enough to set himself on more likely to remember it as the #Jan25 fire thanks to an uncaring and unjust sys- revolution, after its Twitter hashtag, and a tem. But that single act of protest happened joke doing the internet rounds played on to coincide neatly with two other factors, technical internet terminology back then: which turned his self-immolation into the potent catalyst it would become. ❝DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA❞ Program installa- tion: The first was decades-long discontent in Tunisia, and other parts of North Africa, that GUINEA: 100% Complete... had simmered for too long. Bouazizi's act TUNISIA: 100% Complete...

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Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. EGYPT: 100% Complete... expensive bandwidth and desktop com- puters. And hand-in-hand with that growth SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA LYBYA: Downloading... is a dramatic increase in social networking VERASHNI PILLAY activity on the continent, becoming the ALGERIA: Downloading... number one web activity according to some April 5, 2011 estimates. IVORY COAST: 60% [Alert: Virus-Gbagbo www.kas.de/media-africa detected_Trojan Horse-Ouattarra in Quar- In recent months Facebook – currently the www.kas.de antine] most visited website in most of Africa – has seen massive growth on the continent. Ac- CONGO: Connection lost since 1997 cording to the UN's Africa Renewal maga- zine, the number of African Facebook users ZIMBABWE: 404 Error - Server not found in early 2011 stands at over 17 million, up from 10 million in 2009. More than 15% of The joke reflected a real concern: what did people online in Africa are currently using the uprisings mean for the rest of the conti- the platform, compared to 11% in Asia. Two nent? other social networking websites, Twitter and YouTube, rank among the most visited The Region: “The Egyptian Way”? websites in most African countries.

In Zimbabwe a gathering of 46 activists, The numbers would have been unthinkable students and trade unionists tasted the pa- two years ago. In August 2008 Twitter ranoia around the subject when they were stopped offering mobile text services in Af- arrested in February 2011 and charged with rica, which allowed users to receive tweets treason after watching videos of the upris- for free on their phone and send out tweets ings in Egypt and Tunisia. Prosecutors ac- at standard SMS rates. The news caused cused the organisers of trying to "organise, hardly a ripple at the time beyond a few strategise and implement the removal of blog posts pondering the lost potential. Six- the constitutional government of Zimbabwe teen months later Twitter was being used to ... the Egyptian way". help topple governments on the continent.

Zimbabwean President , who The SMS service has been reinstated for has been in power for more than 23 years some countries, including Cameroon in No- and has yet to hold an intimidation-free vember 2010. However the Cameroonian election, may be getting worried as dicta- government suspended the mobile service torships continue to topple, or at least this year as President , in power sway, in the north of Africa. since 1982, battled calls for an uprising against him circulated on the internet and Will Sub-Saharan Africa see similar revolu- via text messages. tions? It's a complex question, as internet penetration in the region is considered dire, It is one of many ways that dictators are especially when compared to the North Afri- trying to control – or co-opt social media, to can countries that saw successful social their benefit. Witnesses in 's violent media-aided uprisings. uprisings claimed in early March that the country's public telecoms company sent Tunisia has one of the highest internet pe- SMS messages calling on subscribers to at- netrations in the continent, with about 35% tack foreigners and accusing them of want- of the population with access to the web. ing to "sow trouble" and "destroy" the coun- Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa fall far try. below 10%. But on the other hand there a number of But on the flipside Sub-Saharan Africa has "techno savvy" politicians in the region, who seen immense growth in internet use as have taken quickly to the medium. mobile phones have fast taken over from

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Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. Ruanda: A President Showing Up Unex- In keeping with the national leaning towards pectedly Facebook, the more established social net- SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA working platform, South African politicians VERASHNI PILLAY Rwandan President is a flawed have largely been wary of Twitter, or slow hero. He ended the Rwandan genocide but on the uptake. Many, like the ruling African April 5, 2011 has since been accused of intimidating op- National Congress's notorious Youth Lea- position parties and allowing human rights gue, held it in suspicion after parody ac- www.kas.de/media-africa abuses by his forces in neighbouring Congo. counts were created after its leader. But www.kas.de But he has been the driver behind the East from 2011 the league along with a handful African country's so-called ICT revolution, of other politicians, have tentatively taken and is incredibly active on social media si- to Twitter. The majority of social networking tes. His Twitter page consists almost solely by South African politicians however takes of replies to his 7000+ followers. Rwandan place on Facebook, where politics and de- blogs are rife with anecdotes of the presi- bate often mixes with personal asides and dent’s personal Twitter responses and even more social content. his acceptance of invitations on Twitter and showing up at events unexpectedly. There Opposition parties, particularly, have effec- are two Facebook pages under his name, tively used social networking in their cam- one with 15 362 fans and the other with 13 paigning. Much of this is borne out of ne- 565. Both have regular status updates, vi- cessity: the monolith ANC, with two-thirds deo clips of interviews and photographs of of the vote and many donors, has a massive the president's activities. marketing budget when it comes to adver- tising the party ahead of elections. Opposi- But there's a catch. Kagame may seem on tion parties must find other ways to get the opposite pole of his paranoid peers in their message across. The official opposi- the continent, in his support for freedom of tion, the Democratic Alliance (DA), launched speech. But the leader has been accused of a comprehensive and well-researched social harshly, and often violently, curtailing the networking campaign ahead of the April freedom of journalists and traditional me- 2009 elections, inspired in no small part by dia. Independent and critical media cover- the success of US President 's age has been all but squeezed out in the election campaign in the same year. country. In this, as with other criticisms, Kagame seems to fall back on the spectre of In the same elections, a small break-away a repeat of the genocide, should he not be party called Congress of the People (Cope) guiding the country's development. It's one split from the ANC. In the hype that fol- of many contradictions that have led lowed, the nascent party – with little struc- Ambrose Pierre, Africa head of Reporters ture or organisation – relied heavily on so- Without Borders, to note that: "Kagame's cial media to get its message across. The policy is similar to that of 's – embrac- party would later be torn apart by internal ing technology but controlling and censoring disputes but the campaigning on Facebook it." in particular attracted much attention at the time. The party's Facebook group quickly South Africa: A Tremendous Growth gathered 20 333 members in the excite- ment that the political landscape may be With about 10,8 percent of its population changing. "FORGET branch meetings! Ro- online, South Africa has the highest number bust debates now take place on political of internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa and parties' group pages on social networking has seen a tremendous growth in social websites like Facebook," announced one media. Over 70% of online users (3 761 blog at the time. 160 people in March 2011) are on Face- book, ranking the country number 31 in The opposition's engagement with social worldwide users, while about one million media stands in contrast to the ANC, who South Africans have Twitter accounts. have relied on more traditional campaigning methods, not properly developing the token

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Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. social media presence they established as ments, regarding his split with the main part of their campaign. However, they still MDC, in a series of two dozen tweets. In SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA saw their customary massive win, proving addition he has consolidated his Facebook VERASHNI PILLAY perhaps that even in South Africa, low in- presence into one official Facebook page, ternet penetration means that social media where he regularly engages with his some April 5, 2011 is not yet the best way to reach the major- 900 fans and responds to their criticism. ity of voters. There is also talk of a new website in the www.kas.de/media-africa pipeline. Considering Ncube's tentative posi- www.kas.de Zimbabwe: Facebook-User Arrested tion in Zimbabwe's political landscape -- fighting against both Zanu-PF and Tsvangi- Despite a failing economy, over the past rai's MDC -- this is clearly part of a strategy decade Zimbabwe has seen a dramatic in- to win him more support and clean up his crease in internet access, with about 12% image as a divisive figure. of the population now online. The ruling party, Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF, are more : Facebook-Users Befriended likely to be suspicious of the medium, with barely any presence on major social net- Tanzanian voters were surprised to find that works. their president, Jakaya Kikwete, was follow- ing them on Twitter ahead of 's Octo- Besides the arrest of the group of 46, a Bu- ber 2010 general elections. He was joined lawayo-based Facebook user was arrested by other big names in Tanzanian politics: in February after posting a message on a political party Chadema Tanzania, Kikwete's Facebook page dedicated to Prime Minister wife Salma and Vice-president Mohamed Morgan Tsvangirai referencing to the Egypt Bilal did the same. Kikwete and Chadema uprisings, again on the charge of “subvert- presidential candidate Willibrod Slaa were ing a constitutional government”. also eager to befriend voters on Facebook.

Opposition figures, however, are sprawled It soon became clear, despite the stream of across different networks in different forms campaign updates via these accounts, that (On Facebook for examples they have a they were set up by supporters and not ne- combination of pages, groups, and personal cessarily sanctioned by the politicians them- profiles). There is little coherency to their selves. Jiang Alipo, a columnist in the coun- strategy. There are several groups and pa- try's paper noted at the time of ges on Facebook dedicated to one individ- the elections that Kikwete had 369 followers ual, while tweeting is often haphazardly do- on Twitter, and followed 374, while Slaa had ne. only 34 followers and was following 26 peo- ple: unlikely numbers for the real deal. MDC politicians like David Coltart, Nelson Chamisa, Obert Gutu, Gorden Moyo, Parliamentary candidates however seemed Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti and Jameson to genuinely be on the platforms them- Timba are among politicians with Facebook selves like Zitto Kabwe on Twitter and pages, while Prime Minister Morgan Tsvan- on Facebook. girai has a fan page with over 60 000 fans, Zimbabwean newspaper The Standard re- The Outlook ported in January. The future for broadband access in Africa is Only two Zanu PF ministers maintain a pre- increasingly bright. The Seacom cable, sence on Twitter while Ncube and Coltart which snakes along the East African coast, update their Twitter accounts most regularly providing international fibre optic bandwidth of the lot. that connects southern Africa to the rest of the world for the first time, heralded that Indeed Ncube has the most comprehensive change. More cables are scheduled to go social media strategy of any Zimbabwean live and Africa's telecoms landscape is set to politician. He has released entire state- change dramatically.

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Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. It will lead to an explosion in growth of broadband internet access. In addition de- SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA creasing costs, better competition and in- VERASHNI PILLAY creasing availability of cheap smart phones and tablet PCs will further drive the broad- April 5, 2011 band revolution. The dependence on mobile in Africa means that politicians will have to www.kas.de/media-africa meet their voters where they are -- and www.kas.de that will be more often than not be on their cellphone, or in time, their tablets and eReaders.

The trend thus far has been for politicians who most need to be heard -- generally those in opposition -- to use social media most effectively. While they have been on the vanguard of using social media, they will need to move to mobile and other plat- forms quickly to position themselves for the internet explosion that will be hitting Sub- Saharan Africa in the next five years.

Social media is also likely to remain one of the top web activities, as new social net- working sites pop up all the time and exist- ing ones continue to gain traction.

It's granted that much of this frantic ex- change of information will be focused on entertainment, personal relationships and lifestyle content. But a significant amount of users will focus on social and political issues -- particularly in countries where those is- sues are of pressing concern.

Ultimately, social media is like a mirror; it can only reflect what is happening among its users. The difference is this mirror faces another so that it repeats things into infin- ity. The viral potential of social media is what makes it so powerful. The content is largely the same as we would see on any other platform where people are allowed to make themselves heard. But here the pro- testor's placard is given the distribution that a news broadcast would normally enjoy, al- lowing grassroots change to become a real- ity.