President William Ruto named most influential African leader on Twitter in 2022

According to the 2022 World Leader Power Ranking report from BCW’s Twiplomacy, continentally, Ruto is followed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni whose international ranks are positions 18 and 29 respectively.

President Ruto, who on his part ranks 13th globally, is also listed as the third most influential leader in the New World Leaders ranking.

"Twiplomacy’s new ranking algorithm has been designed to identify what influence is on Twitter among a particular list of handles. Given a specified time interval and list of Twitter handles, the algorithm assigns a tailored weighting to variables including mentions, tweets, retweets, reach, impressions, follower changes, likes and follower count," the agency said in a statement to newsrooms.

"It then applied additional variables such as gender, age, length of time in office and others to further contextualise, compare and understand influence factors in the ranking. The top three bring together big personalities, geopolitical clout, and a strong domestic following – all factors that determine a world leader’s influence on the platform."

Other factors that determine a leader's success on the social media platform include; quick reaction times, authenticity and a sense of flair and humour.

Globally, Indian Prime Minister Nraendra Modi ranks as the most influential leader on Twitter, according to the report. He is followed by US President Joe Biden and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Colombia's Gustavo Petro and Brazil's Jair M. Bolsonaro were named the fourth and fifth most influential leaders on the planet respectively.

Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky Canada's Justin Tradeau, El Salvador's Nayib Bukele and Chile's Gabriel Boric Font rounded off the top ten most influential world leaders list.

"In terms of age, at an average of 58 years, Twiplomacy’s top 10 are two years younger than the average world leader," the statement added.

"The analysis found that younger leaders are more likely to communicate with followers using emojis, with the top five under 50 years old using more than the overall top five."