Mohamed Salah the King of social media: the 2019 African Cup of Nation digital edition

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Lefupana Mahlomola Martin 

On June 21, 2019, the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) will kick off in Cairo’s International Stadium, where host Egypt take on Zimbabwe’s Warriors. While the main focus will be on who will win the expanded 24-nation team tournament, there is an interesting ranking to take note, as to who is king in digital space of social media.


We have analysed the social media platforms of players that are chosen to represent the 24 African nations and come up with the top 20 with the largest following on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The top 20 is ranked from number 1 with the largest following and number 20 with the lowest following on the list. 

The baseline for a player to be analysed was one million (1 M) following across all the three platforms. We have capped the ranking at 20 players because the article will just be long if we were to include every player with more than a million social media followers. The notable observation from the assessment is that no single player playing in the African leagues made the top 20. Another notable observation is that the English Premier League has more players in this assessment than any other league. This assessment was performed in the month of June, just as we gear towards the 32nd edition of the AFCON. 

It came as no surprise when the current African Footballer of Year,  2018 BBC African Football of the Year and Ballon d’Ór 2018 top 10 finalist Mohamed Salah emerged as the King of social media with the most following in Africa with a staggering 49.1 million across the three platforms. What is interesting about Salah’s staggering social media figures is that, he is 6 times more than the second-placed player on the list, Egyptian teammate and Arsenal midfielder Mohamed ELNeny with 8.2 million followers across all platforms.

This gab represent the Salah powers and pedigree in social media landscape, which can be attributed to his meteoric rise in the last two year as one of the best players in the world. Salah further enhanced his rise in performance by claiming English Premier League leading scorer gong, shared with two other Africans, Liverpool teammate Sadio Mane, Gabon and Arsenal forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang after scoring 22 goals.


Most players are followed on Instagram followed by Twitter, while Facebook is the least followed for almost all players expect for Mohamed Salah who has Facebook 11.8 million, 3 more than in Twitter. Sadio Mane has the second large followers on Instagram with 3.9 million followers, while ELNeny comes 3rd with 3.5 million platform on that platform. The growth of Instagram over the last few years can also be observed in how players performed in this medium, the picture based platform has high number of followership for per player.

African Social Media Kings AFCON Edition - Rank #1 to #20

Twitter, known for its explosive nature, high engagement, exciting content and sometimes controversy has seen most players increase their followership in the recent years. Whilst Salah leads with more 9 million followers ELNeny is second placed with 3.8 million followers. Twitter as a platform continue to grow mainly due to players using options to engage, trendy hashtags, paid ads and other spicy content. 

Facebook is the least followed social media platform of the three, with Mo Salah leading with over 11.8 million, ELNeny impressively second with 9.2 million. Only 4 players except Salah and ELNeny has more than a million Facebook followers and they Riyad Mahrez of Algeria, Yannick Bolasie of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Achraf Hakimi of Morocco and Christian Atsu of Ghana. Facebook has experience slow growth in the last few years and players are not using it often. 

Egypt headlines their dominance in this social media landscape with 7 representatives in the top 20, with 6 of those in the top 10. They are followed by Algeria and Morocco with 3 representatives each, with Algeria’s Mahrez at number 3 with more than 5.7 million followers, while Morocco’s Medhi Benatia at number 5 with 4.7 million followers. 

While the battle for continental title will be in the field, social media will be awash Hashtag, Liveblogs, Trends, behind the scene and growing in numbers depending on performance. Whoever the winner of the 2019 AFCON is, we sure that social media will also be the winner at the end.   

 Photo: Getty Images


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