Twitter and Africa

In what may prove to be the most random thing ever, I embarked on a new nerd project today. I incorporated three interests of mine, Africa, Maps and Twitter. I wanted to compare the "twitter footprint" of each country- just how many mentions might each African country get in a week? I used tweetdeck for my "research". I quickly discovered that, using the week long search history, most of the countries had reached the maximum 100 search records. To combat this I instead searched using the hashtag #. I've never understood the reason for using hashtags but it helped this exercise since it greatly reduced the number of search records.

I went ahead and multiplied the results by a million. I did this a.), because it seems to be the way to do these things and 2, because comparing .0000001 and .0000003 isn't all that interesting, or at best, less interesting than when increased to numbers we're more used to seeing.

A few things stood out:

1. People don't often refer to their friends named Chad using hashtags. That, and I'm glad Ocho Cinco hasn't done anything worth mentioning in the last week.
2. I forgot Lesotho! Oops. I checked - zero hashtag mentions, so it's safe to say it would be yellow in the map below.
3. Differentiating between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo for this exercise is not worth the effort.
4. Not a single person mis-tweeted the word Mail by typing Mali in the last week.
5. More people live in Washtenaw County in Michigan than Western Sahara. While that isn't a surprise, it was surprising to see that the county which boasts both Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan had no #mentions in the last week.

You can click on the map below for a larger image.



I hope you enjoy this little nerd project. I've done a few others you should check out including:

Africa-US Relations
Michigan Man on the Moon
Unredeemed Giftcards

Each country is listed below in its category

Tweet Champs
Seychelles
Western Sahara
Botswana
Mauritius
Liberia
Namibia
Gabon
Madagascar

Very High
Somalia
Gambia
Ghana
Zimbabwe
Cape Verde

High
Congo
Guinea-Bissau
Kenya

Moderate
Rwanda
Swaziland
Malawi
Uganda
Sudan
South Africa
Mauritania

Low
Morocco
Djibouti
Senegal
Burundi
Zambia
Egypt
Tunisia
Congo (Kinshasa)

On Twitter life support
Libya
Mali
Eritrea
Tanzania
Ethiopia
Nigeria
Guinea

Tweet Chumps
Benin
Niger
Algeria
Sierra Leone
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Togo
Chad
Angola
Mozambique
Côte d'Ivoire
Comoros
Central African Republic
Equatorial Guinea
Sao Tome and Principe

Happy map making, wander-lusting, tweeting and blogging.

For a great perspective on the topic, check out Soyapi Mumba's Blog post

My Top 10 Pet Peeves

On any given day this list could look quite a bit different but I thought creating a list of my Top 10 Pet Peeves would be fun. I'd love to add yours to the list. Go ahead, let it out!

These are in no particular order.

1. When people pronounce the "s" in Illinois. If it doesn't belong to the state, it didn't make a noise... Get it?

2. Old people who use the u-scan at the supermarket and use change to pay for all of their "no barcode" items for which they can't read the #'s.

3. People who open the door and stand there for more than six seconds, therefore forcing you to run to the door to offer your thanks.

4. People that don't pay attention to the other bidders on the price is right and therefore don't recognize the bid that would guarantee a spot on stage.

5. Waiting in line at Subway only to discover the person in front of you brought a list of customized subs for the entire office. They often start with "Sorry, but I have a lot." Don't apologize to them, apologize to me.

6. Twitter timing out!

7. Commenters on posting boards who criticize others for their poor "grammer".

8. ohio. Both the state and THE University.

9. Ugh, Nancy Grace!

10. Heirs to Nigerian fortunes who need me to hold on to their money for awhile, but who will reward me handsomely

Discussion and Map of US-African Relationships

With President Obama's recent trip to Africa I started thinking about the political relations between the US and the many African Nations. The forgotten continent is a source of great natural resources, cultural richness and strategic geographic location.

I thought it would be interesting to facilitate a conversation on US-African relations. I've created a draft map of Africa showing each country's relationship with the United States. I've broken the map into six different categories, Negative, Strained, Neutral, Improving, Positive and Good.

These ratings ARE completely subjective. This draft is based on my knowledge of African-US relations along with some quick research. It was hard to define criteria for the six different categories I used but listed below are a few general guidelines.

Negative - Beyond minor political differences, a negative rating suggests severely strained and complex relationships.

Strained - Various issues have caused either sanctions or specific actions by the US Government.

Neutral - While some positives are included in the relationship, various issues prevent a better relationship with the US

Improving - Countries who have historically had a strained relationship with the US but are improving and steps have been made to better the relationship.

Positive - Most African Countries were placed in this category which represents a cordial relationship, mutual respect and support.

Good - Often involving military agreements with the US and strong support of each other in International groups such as the United Nations. These nations also generally have respected democratic political processes with duly elected leadership willing to work with the United States.



Again, this rating system and the ratings themselves are subjective. I welcome your comments, suggestions and criticisms. I'm really interested in facilitating a discussion on the US relationships with African countries. Let me know if you agree or disagree and WHY!

I've included the categorized list below. To get a large, high quality view of the US-African relationship map, click on the image.


Negative
Somalia
Sudan

Strained
Eritrea
Zimbabwe

Neutral
Mauritania
Gambia
DRC
Libya
Central African Republic

Improving
Liberia
Angola
Congo
Uganda
Algeria

Positive
South Africa
Burkina Faso
Ghana
Côte d'Ivoire
Guinea
Sierra Leone
Guinea-Bissau
Cape Verde
Seychelles
Mauritius
Comoros
Malawi
Madagascar
Mozambique
Rwanda
Burundi
Swaziland
Lesotho
Namibia
Gabon
Ethiopia
Kenya
Egypt
Chad
Niger
Cameroon
Equatorial Guinea
Nigeria
Benin
Togo

Good
Morocco
Mali
Senegal
Tanzania
Zambia
Botswana
Djibouti
Tunisia
Sao Tome and Principe