Social media are changing the political landscape across the globe, including in Africa, where Presidents and other top politicians are using various platforms, especially Twitter, to mobilise and grow their constituencies.

Data collected in January by French multilingual news network Africanews showed that the ten most influential serving African politicians had a combined 27-million-strong Twitter following.

At the top of the pile was Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, with 5.5-million followers. Tweets on his account ranged from health to the economy and education. William Ruto, Kenya’s Vice President from 2012 to August this year and President-Elect at the time of writing, was in second position, with 4.4-million followers, while Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari had four-million, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame had 2.5-million, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni had 2.4-million, Ghana’s Nana Akufo-Addo and our very own Oom Cyril had 2.1-million apiece, Senegal’s Macky Sall had 1.8-million, Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed had 1.1-million and Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu had 904 300.

At some point, Kenya’s outgoing President, Uhuru Kenyatta, topped the stakes. When he deactivated his accounts in March 2019, citing constant insults and name-calling on his timelines, he had over seven-million followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

But the realisation that their loose-cannon principals can bang away on a keyboard any time must be giving Buhari’s and Ruto’s aides persistent anxious moments. Buhari is the fellow who boasted in a tweet that he would deploy the army to crush disaffected elements in south-eastern Nigeria – a region where one-million people perished from 1967 to 1970 in a civil war sparked by a secession attempt – while Ruto mocked the Congolese for wearing high-waist trousers and not being able to keep cows as an investment. He also quoted nonexistent Bible verses while campaigning.

Buhari and Ruto are not the only high- ranking politicians to have made unforgettable gaffes on social media. Back in 2011 – on April 28, to be exact – a political aide to UK Labour Party Parliamentarian Ed Balls recommended that he search his own name on Twitter to check out what Britons were saying about him. Balls made the mistake of typing his own name into a new tweet instead of the search field. Eleven years on, Balls, who has retired from politics, still hasn’t deleted the tweet, the deadpan absurdity of which continues to bemuse successive generations.

To this day, April 28, which has come to be known as Ed Balls Day, is celebrated by thousands in amusing fashion – by way of memes, GIFs and funny tweets.

There have been other hilarious gaffes. In 2017, for instance, Ted Cruz – remember the US Republican Party repeat Presidential primary election candidate? – appeared to like a tweet from a pornographic website advertising a movie. This apparent endorsement of the movie resulted in its popularity soaring online. Later explaining the tweet away, Cruz said it was “inadvertent” and “a mistake”.

Of course, any write-up about gaffes by those in high places – on social media and elsewhere – would be incomplete without mentioning Donald Trump. In May 2017, when Twitter still believed Trump’s presence on social media was okay, the former US President tweeted: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe . . .” Although Trump deleted the tweet, ʻcovfefe’ became a viral sensation nevertheless. It also became the subject of speculation, intrigue and mockery. Bizarrely, Trump would not admit that finger trouble got in the way as he tried to type ‘coverage’. This has only fuelled the legend of ʻcovfefe’.

Given the rate at which Ruto put his foot in it as he vied for the top State job in Kenya, I am prepared to bet my bottom rand that there will be a lot to write about him when we celebrate Ed Balls Day next year.