Uhuru Kenyata, the new face on facebook

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s use of Facebook as a platform for creating a sense of political involvement among his country men and women has boosted his following on the social network.

Kenyatta, who assumed office on April 13, 2013, is the African president whose Facebook fan base follows that of President Goodluck Jonathan closely from behind. While Jonathan, who joined Facebook in May 2010, commands a following of 1.2million people, Kenyatta’s fan base has hit 831, 000.

The Kenyan leader, who posts messages on the social network almost on a daily basis, also leverages the use of Scribid, a digital documents library to publish documents and other writings for his Facebook audience.

Kenyatta’s latest speech during a programme organised by his government, in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development and UKAID, has been viewed on Scribid by over a thousand people – many of which were directed to the page from Facebook.

A quick check on Kenyatta’s Facebook timeline shows that while his followers, many of whom are Kenyans,  engage him on constructive criticism as regards the state of the economy, education and other key developmental issues, they do not abuse or address him with unprintable names like some Nigerians do on Jonathan’s Facebook page.

It is worthy of note that while the Kenyan State House is active on both Facebook and Twitter, such could not be said of the State House in Abuja. The State House in Kenya has a following of both 113,050 and 67,491 on Facebook and Twitter respectively.  The State House Kenya Facebook page was created a day before Kenyatta’s swearing in.

Even the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit (Digital), which coordinates the digital media strategy of the Kenya government, has presence on major social networking sites