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NAIROBI, Kenya | Xinhua | Every Sunday, several streets of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, as well as its suburbs, usually bustle with activity involving mainly young people.
The youngsters normally take photos in all manner of poses as others make skits and record videos using their phones.
The photos taken and videos recorded make content, which they post on various social media platforms in the East African nation, in particular, TikTok.
TikTok has now become the go-to social media site for millions of Kenyan youth.
They are flocking to the site in droves not only to share their content but also to watch what others have created in what has become a “national craze.”
“TikTok is where everything happens,” 21-year-old Sherily Mulwa said in a recent interview. “If you are not on TikTok, you will not know the latest trends or happenings.”
While Mulwa is on other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, she spends most of her time on TikTok. “A day sometimes passes without me going to the other socials, but I am always on TikTok, checking what other people are doing and also posting my content,” she said.
The TikTok community has been growing faster in Kenya than on any other social media platform.
This is attributed to several factors, including the ease of making content trend faster, its huge audience, and the ease of sharing videos, according to Bernard Mwaso of Edell IT Solution, a software startup in Nairobi.
“With TikTok, your content will trend faster even when you don’t have a huge following as long as it is engaging to the audience. This is because of the app’s algorithms unlike on other social media platforms,” he said, adding that besides that, there are opportunities to make money on the app making it appealing to Kenyans.
The huge popularity of TikTok came to the fore in Kenya in March when one of its stars, Brian Chira, 29, died in a road accident.
Thousands of youth in their 20s flocked to his funeral on the outskirts of Nairobi, overwhelming the planners who had expected about 500 people.
Through the platform, the fans fundraised more than 8 million shillings (62,000 U.S. dollars) in a fast in Kenya.
Safaricom, Kenya’s leading telecommunication firm, noted that about 10.6 million Kenyans aged 18 and above use the app.
Similarly, Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023, said 54 percent of Kenyans it sampled used TikTok, the highest proportion across the world.
The survey noted Kenyans use the app to access news, and entertainment and connect with each other.
Safaricom noted that in Kenya, TikTok is among the most accessed applications on the internet.
“It pushes an average of 1.91 petabytes of data (one petabyte is 1 million gigabytes), approximately 15 billion Megabits of traffic, which is attributed to the application’s popularity among the Kenyan youth. If this is converted to viewing hours, it is almost 6,000 hours of continuous viewing,” the firm said in a report.
Tima Ali, a core networks, planning and designing engineer at Safaricom, said that in 2022, the company noted TikTok was moving huge traffic within their network.
She explained that the company had to make adjustments to its network to cater to the huge numbers and enhance user experience. But it is not only the young who are frequenting TikTok in Kenya, those over 40 years old as well as politicians, activists, and preachers are among a new lot that is finding the app very useful.
Victor Kanyara, a pastor in Nairobi, is the latest sensation on the app, attracting thousands of viewers every time he preaches.
“I joined TikTok because most of the younger generation are there and I needed to reach them. This is working for me,” said the 42-year-old. ■
