Twitter is one of the popular social media platforms that Rwandans use to disseminate and gather news not only in Rwanda but around the world. It is also a key avenue through which the rest of the world get news about Rwanda. Nearly all of Rwanda’s diplomatic corps have a presence on the social networking site, although most of them are hardly active. Since Twitter has a diversified audience of over 300 million active users every month, Rwandan diplomats should seize the opportunity that the micro-blogging tool presents by promoting the country’s interests abroad and engaging with Rwandans who live in different countries across the world. Over the last few years, Rwanda has been expanding its diplomatic presence, opening new missions in Qatar, Ghana and Morocco as Kigali seeks to boost economic ties as well as bilateral relations with different countries. To achieve such targets will, in some part, be aided by how aggressively the country’s top diplomats use social media platforms, especially Twitter, to communicate and advance the country’s positions on different matters. Twiplomacy can also easily boost the country’s tourism sector, which is Rwanda’s largest foreign exchange earner, providing over 90,000 jobs and bringing in over 400 million US dollars annually, according to the Rwanda Development Board. Moreover, the target is to double tourism receipts to 800 million US dollars by 2024, which Rwandan diplomats can help achieve by marketing the country’s many tourism potential and destinations on social media platforms.
