KIGALI - The New Times, has been ranked among the most widely read newspapers from the African continent, with its on-line edition placing at 25th out of the 50 top most popular newspaper websites.

The survey was carried out by an Australian based firm, 4International Media & Newspapers (4imn), an international directory and search engine that focuses on worldwide newspapers including 7,000 newspapers ranked by web popularity in 200 countries globally.

In a recent release which ranks global newspapers in 2010 basing on the above criterion, The New Times ranked 25th out of 50 top continental papers in which Egypt’s Al-Ahram came first followed by The Times and Mail & Guardian Online (both from South Africa) in the second and third place respectively.

Globally, The New Times comes at the 724th place out of 7,000 newspapers. America’s New York Times takes first place followed by The People’s Daily of China at the second place, UK’s The Guardian is third, in the fourth place is El-mundo of Spain and the fifth place is occupied by Asahi Shimbun of Japan.

Uganda’s The New Vision comes in fourth place while Die Burger of South Africa emerges fifth in the same category in which another South African Newspaper comes at number 50.

The rankings also featured The Daily Nation of Kenya (13th in Africa) and The Monitor of Uganda (18th in Africa).
Other regional newspapers ranked include The East African (Kenya) in 33rd in Africa and The Arusha Times (Tanzania) which in the 40th place in the continent.

The ranking is based on an algorithm including three unbiased and independent Web metrics extracted from three different search engines namely; Google Page Rank, Yahoo Inbound Links, and Alexa Traffic Rank.

The 4imn website (www.4imn.com) said its aim was to provide an approximate popularity ranking of worldwide newspapers based on the popularity of their websites which could help international readers and media/Public Relations professionals to understand how popular a specific newspaper is in a foreign country.

The New Times is the leading English newspaper in Rwanda. The online edition can be accessed at www.newtimes.co.rw.