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The World Leader Power Ranking report from Burson Cohn and Wolfe’s (BCW) Twiplomacy has placed President William Ruto as the most influential African leader on Twitter in 2022.

The digital diplomacy initiative shows that Ruto jumped nine positions from the 2021 global ranking to rank at position 13 globally this year.

Twiplomacy also ranked President Ruto (left) third among new world leaders.He is followed closely by South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni as the second and third most influential leaders on the social networking platform on the continent.

Globally, Ramaphosa and Museveni rank 18th and 29th respectively.

The ranking is informed by an analysis of data collected between October 1, 2021 and September 30, 2022.

Digital diplomacy

Twiplomacy is a digital diplomacy initiative by a strategic communication agency and part of BCW Global.

“The algorithm assigned a tailored weighting to variables including mentions, tweets, retweets, reach, impressions, follower changes, likes, and follower count,” a statement from Twiplomacy indicated.

Top-ranked leaders in the report – from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Chilean President Gabriel Boric have engaged audiences with shorter, more emotional content.

“While President Zelenskyy’s rise is driven in part by widespread support for Ukraine in the wake of war, if this ranking had been released a year earlier, he’d still make the top 15, in part because of his distinctive, raw Twitter personality and skillful use of the platform,” the reported noted.

Globally, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the most influential world leader, followed by US President Joe Biden and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.