This morning Nigeria’s President, the aptly-named Goodluck Jonathan, declared his intention to seek the presidential nomination of the incumbent People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
And the platform he chose to make this declaration? Facebook! We all knew he would declare - it was always a matter of when, not, if. But clearly, Mark Zuckerberg should be given brownie-points for the cross-generational appeal his social media invention now has. The last time I checked, Goodluck (I choose to call him by his first name, because of the lucky-charmish ring to it) had 209,558 facebook fans; even Obama’s PR gurus would blush – well, almost. But Goodluck’s much more modest twitter following of 1,203 is still laudable for a man I’ve now come to call the accidental president. One of his declared presidential rivals, the enigmatic Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB), for all his campaign cash flows, has only 2,690 fans. So question is why have African leaders jumped on the social media bandwagon to proselytize their politics and programs? A BBC news online article from June 2008, cited the internet as key to Obama’s presidential victories. The web has always been mainstream in America political life, while historically the ordinary African villager would have grown up welded to that old British institution known as the BBC World Service radio.
In Africa, you may not have a TV set, but it is more likely, Mr. ‘Subsistence Farmer’ in the remote hinterland of Somaliland’s Puntland region would only be around 1,000 metres away from a communal radio set transmitting world news in his local Somali or Arabic language, however badly tuned the frequency. But with an estimated 1.5million plus – and growing – facebook users in Nigeria, Goodluck’s strategy may not be so naïve in the longer-term, when we’ll all probably be e-junkies. Only problem is that in a country of 140million, those users are still in the minority and the majority of the population still live in abject poverty with no access to any form of communication technology. Domestically, Goodluck’s use of facebook as the first public declaration of his bid, will stir up a political storm, and certainly not in a teacup. PDP officials will fume at what they see as the president’s attempt to pre-empt a party decision on the nomination. The press may also rue the lack of any official press conference. Indeed most domestic and international media outlets only found out about his move on facebook. Some have cited his move as an attempt to steal the shine from IBB. But if the next leadership contest for Nigeria is going to be played out on-line, then it’s only fair that; he who blogs most, wins most!
Or is it? Kenyan civil society activist, Ory Okolloh reckons we’re still some way off from seeing online media or technology helping politicians get elected or toppling governments. In many parts of Africa, there is even less connectivity. In Sierra Leone for instance, less than 3 out of every 1,000 people have internet access. In some countries general government suspicion about the agenda of e-bloggers, e-journalists mirrors politicians’ love-hate relationship with the media. In fact, judging by the continuous hounding of journalists in Africa, and curtailing of press freedom, it’s little wonder that Africa’s techno-bloggers are still a tad paranoid. But facebook and other social technology could change the way Africa does politics, potentially altering the relationship between citizen and state in Africa. Ordinary Africans have been the trend-setters and governments are just only playing catch up. And it’s not just the continent’s middle-class who are in the fold; witness the equal enthusiasm for information your average Kiberia (a Nairobi slum) slum-dweller displays even when he/she has to share the internet café PC with 4 or 5 other users. Information is power, and those who control information are some of the most powerful people on earth. Just ask George Soros how he came into his billions. That’s why it still surprises me how much more enthusiasm for social media, ICT etc you find in Africa’s private sector, than in its public bureaucracy where die-hard civil servants are still loathe to give-up their endless paper trails and internal memos decades after colonial rule. Governments could literally change the way they function by e-migrating.
It’s true that some recent e-governance experiments in Africa have failed; Mozambique for instance tried to collate the results of its 2004 elections online but failed, while the PDP’s attempt to introduce a relatively simple online registration process for party membership has stalled. But it shows that Africa is modernizing and at least trying to adapt. Moreover, Africa’s on-line revolution, it would seem, doesn’t have to be revolutionary. To be sure, not every blogger or e-analyst is anti-government or anti-establishment. Goodluck’s move essentially paves the way for our typically reticent African leaders to cross the generational divide, and follow in Obama’s footsteps. There is currently a lot of government content online in Africa. But I always wince when I go in search of information on a website in or on Africa and realize that the website was last updated in 1806! Some like Goodluck are mastering the art of e-communication; others have only just learnt how to send emails as septuagenarians. But if projections are that by 2050 young people aged 15 – 25 years will account for one person in five in Sub-Saharan Africa, and most will have mobile phones or internet access by then, then Africa’s politicians had better start e-talking.
