Tanzania will go to the polls on October 30, 2010 and the general election campaign is well underway. As the campaigns heat up, presidential candidates and other candidates fighting for parliamentary seats are using new media tools to communicate with potential voters. Along with campaign rallies, which target the majority of the population, a small number of politicians have started to use social media tools such as blogs, online videos, Facebook and twitter to create deeper engagement with voters.
It is hard to accurately comment on the impact of the ongoing online campaigns because of lack of up-to-date statistics on usage of social media tools in Tanzania. The number of Tanzanians using the Internet is still small in comparison to the total population. In a country of 41 million people there are only
676,000 Internet users representing 1.6% of the total population. Among those with access to the internet there are only
141,580 Facebook users, with 74% of them aged between 18-34 years.
Whether created by fans or formal campaign officials, there are a few websites, blogs, facebook pages and twitter accounts running campaigns for presidential candidates and those fighting for parliamentary seats from the ruling CCM party. The
official website of the current president and the ruling CCM party candidate, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, has a link to a
facebook page with more than 4,500 followers. There is also
another facebook page dedicated to Mr Kikwete with more than 13,500 fans.
Kikwete’s running mate who is also the candidate for the Vice President's post,
Dr. Gharib Bilal, has more than one campaign websites. One
site is linked to Mr Kikwete’s website and
Dr. Bilal’s twitter account, while the
other website has a link to a
facebook page dedicated to his campaign.
One of the opposition parties presidential candidates
Dr. Wilbrod Slaa from
CHADEMA party has a
facebook page linked from his official website with about 910 fans. Likewise there are
more than two
facebook pages dedicated to Dr. Slaa’s campaign with about 9000 people who
‘like’ Dr. Slaa. He also has a
twitter account with very few tweets.
Similar to Tanzania Mainland, election manifestos,
pictures and
videos of the campaign rallies are on display on the websites of the Zanzibar’s CCM presidential candidate
Dr Ali Mohamed Shein as well as on his main opposition contender
Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad from the Civic United Front (CUF).
Announced mostly through twitter and blogs, online campaign videos with clips from election rallies have so far received a little more than 12,000 views in total at the time of writing this post. Some of the videos appear to have been uploaded directly from the rallies, like
this one from CHADEMA’s Kigoma North candidate,
Hon. Zitto Kabwe:
By Abdallah Shelufumo quoting ''English Global Voices''