Economy
By Benprince Ezeh
AKINWUMI Adesina President, African Development Bank, AfDB, has said that social media offered him the platform to interact, engage, inform, hear perspectives and stay connected.
Adesina, while speaking at the NECCI PR roundtable on “Social Media, National Security, and Social Change: Bridging the Gap for Development in Africa” on Thursday, October 28 in Lagos, said that eight years ago, he did something that would change one of the ways in which he interacts.
“First as a Minister in Nigeria, and later as President of the AfDB, I created my own Twitter account, since then, I have posted close to 2,000 messages and had the privilege of engaging with more than half a million followers.
“I wanted to connect with people. Social media offered me the perfect platform to interact, to engage, to inform, to hear perspectives, and to stay connected.
“Bureaucracy and the hierarchical nature of societies make it easy for leaders to become far removed from those they are called to serve. A letter written to them may get to their attention, if lucky, or you may receive a computerized reply. That is no longer the case with social media. Today, leaders have no choice. They must engage,” he said.
According to him, citizens now have social platforms to speak, vent and engage in the public sphere.
“Leaders, who are far from their people, no longer have a place to hide. The people are at their gates, daily, with inquiries, views, opinions, vitriol and sometimes sarcasm.
“We are all in a new world of rapid social dialogue. From Twitter to Tik-Tok or any other social media platform for that matter, our lives would not be the same without them.
“Just a few weeks ago, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, experienced a global outage that cut off users from the platforms. By the time the services returned to normal hours later, billions of people and business users were already hyperventilating about the disconnection from their virtual worlds.
“Today, billions of people have unprecedented power to communicate and transcend boundaries and barriers, right in the palm of their hands, via smart mobile phones. It is a new world and one in which citizens wield influence that was not possible just a little over 15 years ago. The ‘power in the palm’, has democratized communication and given users transformative platforms to communicate their ideas, promote goods and services, and build social, professional, and business relationships globally.
“The number of social media users in Africa is rising rapidly. The estimates for 2021 are that 45% of the population in northern Africa use social media, 8% in central Africa, 10% in eastern Africa, 16% in western Africa, and 41% in southern Africa,” Adesina said.
According to him, the International Finance Corporation, Africa’s Internet economy contributes close to $115 billion or about 4.5% of the continent’s total gross domestic product, GDP and could reach $180 billion, or 5.2% of GDP by 2025.
“There are around 40 million social media users in Nigeria today. While those are large numbers by any standard, it is still less than 20% of the population.
“By comparison, Taiwan has a social media penetration of more than 88%. But Nigeria is catching up fast: last year, the number of users increased by a whopping 22%.
“WhatsApp is now the most popular social media platform in the country (93%), followed by Facebook (86.2%) and YouTube (81.6%). Twitter used to have a 61.4% share of Internet users in the country, prior to the ban imposed by the federal government.
“Today, social media has become the place where positions are claimed, disputes and discussions are led, communities are built, business is conducted, and information is shared. Its influence and reach in terms of real time communication and messaging are unprecedented.
“The ability to reach millions of people in an instant is already well established by the ‘twitterati,’ ‘glitterati,’ businesses, public servants, political figures, and the public alike,” he added.
Tags: AfDB Akinwumi Adesina Benprince Ezeh
