Following his appointment as the new Prime Minister yesterday at around 1pm, Anastase Murekezi had by last evening gained hundreds of new followers on the social media platform Twitter. At the time of the announcement, the immediate former Minister for Public Service and Labour had 279 followers on his handle @amurekezi. But his followers had grown to 759 by press time and counting though he had only tweeted thrice. “I thank enough His Excellency @PaulKagame, President of The Republic of Rwanda for having appointed me Prime Minister,” his first tweet since April 8, read. Shortly after, Murekezi tweeted that his appointment would provide him a unique opportunity to keep serving the country. Having joined the popular social media outlet in June 2011, the new Prime Minister has not been very active as he has only 22 tweets in three years with a significant number of them being retweets. He follows a total of 17 people and institutions amongst them President Paul Kagame (@PaulKagame), Rwandan ministers among others. Twitter has increasingly become an avenue for Rwandan leaders and policy makers to connect with members of the public due to ease of use and convenience. A survey conducted by Burson-Marsteller, an international public relations and communications firm last month to determine the extent to which world leaders connect on the social networking site, ranked President Kagame among the top 50 world leaders who actively use Twitter. The social media ranking dubbed “Twiplomacy” placed foreign affairs minister Louise Mushikiwabo fourth worldwide and third in the continent in the category of the most conversational leaders on the social media with 75 per cent of all her tweets being replies.
