Social media, photography and African political office holders

Every President, Governor and prominent political office holder in Africa has a media assistant, numerous advisers and most recently a personal photographer.

Twenty years ago, social media was not an important factor in the life of the African politician but same cannot be said today. The effectiveness of the photographer is as necessary as the chief press secretary and other appointees of the office holder mainly because he/she is the mirror that projects the boss to the outside world.

With the power of the lens, the human angle, family man/woman story, religiously upright side of the politician is told to the numerous followers on social media making them more loved and appreciated.

In time past, newspapers and television stations were the means of getting to a large reader/viewer base but with a phone, everyone in any corner in Africa can check out pictures and posts of leaders in Africa on their various social media pages.

President George Weah of Liberia has over 85,000 followers on his verified Twitter account and well over 40,000 on his Instagram and numerous pictures of his activities are released to the public. Just like his Liberian counterpart, President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana has 1 million on Twitter while Kenyan President, Paul Kagame has 400,000 more followers on the same social media application.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has 1 million Twitter followers and his Nigerian colleague, Muhammadu Buhari has more than double of that number.

In 2018, Faceook announced it had 139 million users a month in Africa and that 98% of the number were connected via mobile. A very large number of these users follow their political office holders on Facebook to check their activities on a day to day basis.

Knowing fully well that social media has come to stay and has been embraced by Africans, office holders have taken good advantage of it by continuously churning out needed pictorial and written information to the public.

Tolani Alli, the personal photographer to the immediate past governor of Oyo state, Nigeria agreed politicians have taken full advantage of social media using photography to tell their stories through narratives the media wont approach.

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“The best way to communicate is through a photo. Most times politicians don’t get to tell their stories, things are often one sided and the narratives that are shaped around them is what the media says and what is being told with their own angle not being told. As a personal photographer, I told the whole story of what was going on at that particular time,” she stated.

Elaborating, she said the recently concluded elections in Nigeria had politicians communicating directly with the public unlike in the past where they had to wait for it to be done wholly by the newspapers and media and this was better done when a professional storyteller {photographer} did it.

Timileyin Adeshina, a staff photographer at the Presidential villa, the seat of power of the Nigerian government also spoke on the subject.

“During the 2019 elections, photography was used as a tool to evoke consciousness, create a sense of fear in opponents by showing large numbers at campaigns and create empathy”, he said.

He went on to explain how their team was able to present President Buhari to the masses as a civilian more than an army General with pictures from humorous scenes, humble gestures and democratic consultations.

Africa’s political space cannot be divorced from photography and social media, it has come to stay.