This post is an update of December 2010’s list of African leaders with a Facebook presence. The numbers and a couple of links have been adjusted.

My, how has African Facebook momentum changed in the past 3 months! Less than a year ago, the Internet was buzzing with news of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s social media successes. Recently, however, the focus of African social media has shifted to revolutionary themes.

A solid number of nations, most notably Angola, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Libya, and Egypt have seen extraordinary Facebook growth (assuming the trends regarding leader page fan numbers reflects a general trend of Facebook adoption within the leader’s nation). Most notably:

• Egypt’s former president now has over 27,000 fans on Facebook – most likely the result of sheer international interest in the leader rather than Egyptian support
• The Facebook page for ex-Tunisian President Ben Ali ceases to exist
• Pages for interim Presidents in both Egypt and Tunisia (and Ivory Coast) have few fans
• Disputed Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo now has nearly 32,000 fans after only having 16,000 three months ago. Internationally recognized Alassane Ouattara hardly has a Facebook presence
• Southern African nations of Angola and Zimbabwe showed impressive growth

Again, little has changed in terms of which nations’ leaders have official Facebook pages.
Also noteworthy:

• Zimbabwe’s PM attracted followers at a much lesser rate (6%) than leaders with a similar base in December.
• 9 nations have seen no change or a decrease in fan base. 3 of these (Ethiopia, Gabon, Tunisia) were the result of removed pages.
• Mauritania and Somalia still have no official group for their respective leaders, indicating very low Facebook penetration.
• The private profile of Ethiopia’s PM Zenawi has been removed
• The private profile of Gabon’s Ali Bongo has been removed, but an unofficial page has already attracted nearly as many fans
• On average, the number of fans of a given leader rose 24% over the past 3 months
• Interestingly, despite having hundreds of thousands of fans, the page for Tunisian Ben Ali has disappeared but the page for Egyptian Hosni Mubarak still remains
• Despite having a substantial Internet user base, Libyans tend to not support Col. Gaddafi via Facebook
• For a nation with such a high level of media censorship and an estimated 16,000 Facebook users, Eritrea has 6,200 fans for its leader’s fan page. Many of these fans are most likely diasporans
• In order of sheer fan base: Nigeria (511k), Kenya (80k), Morocco (74k), Zimbabwe (60k), Ivory Coast (32k)

The list as of March 2011:

Country	President (or other title)	Facebook Page Type (hyperlinked)	# of Likes	% Change since December 2010 (3 months)
Algeria	Abdelaziz Bouteflika	Official Page	14970	18%
Angola	Jose Dos Santos	Community Page	1202	192%
Benin	Thomas Yayi Boni	Official Page	5711	15%
Botswana	Seretse Khama Ian Khama	Community Page	77	-1%
Burkina Faso	Blaise Compaoré	Unofficial Page	7791	38%
Burundi	Pierre Nkurunziza	Community Page	258	39%
Cameroon	Biya Paul	Private Profile	1274	-2%
Cape Verde	Pedro Pires	Community Page	682	57%
Central African Republic	Francois Bozize Yangouvonda	Personal Profile?	157	-2%
Chad	Lt Gen. Idriss Deby	Public Profile	4983	54%
Comoros	Ahmed Abdallah Sambi	Community Page	59	4%
Congo, Republic of	Denis Sassou-Nguesso	Official Page | Private Profile	4952 / 1356	23% / -4%
Congo, Democratic Republic of	Joseph Kabila	Private Profile | Official Page	4395 / 2652	-13%
Cote d'Ivoire	Laurent Gbagbo	Official Page	31687	106%
Cote d'Ivoire	Alassane Ouattara	Community Page	81	n/a
Djibouti	Ismail Omar Guelleh	Unofficial Page?	3394	32%
Egypt*	Mohamed Hussein Tantawi	Community Page	37	n/a
(Egypt)	ex (Hosni Mubarak)	Unofficial Page	27863	77%
Equatorial Guinea	Brig. Gen. (ret) Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo	Community Page	29	32%
Eritrea	Isaias Afeworki	Unofficial Page	6206	19%
Ethiopia	Meles Zenawi (PM)	Community Page	415	-51%
Gabon	Ali Bongo Ondimba	Community Page / Unofficial Page	575 / 1137	-2% / -100%
The Gambia	Yahya Jammeh	Unofficial Page	4628	23%
Ghana	John Evans Atta-Mills	Unofficial Page	14698	31%
Guinea	Sékouba Konaté	Unofficial Page	3199	16%
Guinea-Bissau	Malam Bacai Sanha	Unofficial Page	57	36%
Kenya	Mwai Kibaki	Unofficial Page	79559	29%
Lesotho	King Letsie III (King)	Unofficial Page	4165	12%
Liberia	Ellen Sirleaf Johnson	Official Page?	3878	15%
Libya	Col. Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi	Unofficial Page	4244	52%
Madagascar	Andry Rajoelina	Unofficial Page	1167	29%
Malawi	Bingu wa Mutharika	Group | Community Page	70 / 86	-5%
Mali	Amadou Toumani Toure	Group 1 | Group 2	1467 / 982	4% / 5%
Mauritania	Ba Mamadou Mbaré	Community Page	0	0%
Mauritius	Sir Anerood Jugnauth	Unofficial Page	704	5%
Morocco	King Mohamed VI (King)	Unofficial Page	74433	25%
Mozambique	Armando Emilio Guebuza	Official Page?	2561	38%
Namibia	Hifikepunye Pohamba	Group	303	0%
Niger	Salou Djibo (Head of Military Junta)	Community Page	238	45%
Nigeria	Dr. Goodluck Jonathan	Official Page	511386	50%
Rwanda	Paul Kagame	Unofficial Page	13629	21%
Sao Tome & Principe	Fradique De Menezes	Community Page	26	8%
Senegal	Abdoulaye Wade	Unofficial Page	3785	28%
Seychelles	James Michel	Public Profile	4838	6%
Sierra Leone	Ernest Bai Koroma	Unofficial Page	1429	4%
Somalia	Adan Mohamed Nurr "Madobe" (Interim President)	Community Page	0	0%
South Africa	Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma	Unofficial Page	20847	42%
Sudan	Omar Hassan al-Bashir	Group	45	7%
Swaziland	King Msati III (King)	Community Page	37	37%
Tanzania	Jakaya Kikwete	Official Page	27946	31%
Togo	Faure Gnassingbe	Group	221	5%
Tunisia*	Fouad Mebazaa	Community Page	3	n/a
(Tunisia)	ex (Zine El Abidine Ben Ali)	Official Page	0	-100%
Uganda	Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni	Unofficial Page / Profile	4853 / 791	n/a
Zambia	Rupiah Banda	Community Page	53	104%
Zimbabwe	Robert Gabriel Mugabe	Unofficial Page | Community Page	3549 / 3200	68% / 110%
Zimbabwe	Morgan Tsvangirai (PM)	Official Page	60226	6%

The above table lists all top African heads of state (usually President) and provides a link to the one or two most popular Facebook pages, groups, or profiles for a given leader. The final column shows how many users are interested in the particular leader. Loose definitions of the page-types:

• Official page: A page run by the actual leader.
• Public profile: A presidential account with a public wall and information about the leader.
• Private profile: An seemingly real account without a public wall or information about the leader.
• Unofficial page: A user-created page that serves as the leader.
• Group: A user-created group dedicated to a leader.
• Community page: A placeholder courtesy of Wikipedia for cases when no user-generated page exists.