Politicians embrace social media

Rwandan politicians and public servants are increasingly joining social media networks as a way of reaching out to the public to improve transparency and accountability. They are led by President Paul Kagame, who manages his own Twitter account (@PaulKagame) and the Minister of Health Dr Agnes Binagwaho (@agnesbinagwaho ), who hosts a weekly interactive Twitter session every Monday. The latest to join the social media platform is Local Government Minister James Musoni (above) who has close to 1,000 friends on Facebook since he joined in March 2011.Musoni has scheduled his Twitter (@jamesMUSONI) and Facebook sessions every Mondays and Thursdays starting from 04:00pm to 05:30pm.In a recent interview with a local online news agency, Musoni said that when he joined the social networking sites, his intentions was to reach out to a wider audience and have people forward their views to him. “Since I started using Facebook, I have received many concerns coming from the public, which I have tried to follow up and solve,” noted the Minister. Rwanda has embarked on using ICT tools to improve communication with several national forums and conferences streamed live on Twitter and Facebook. The latest were the National Dialogue and the Children’s Summit.