President Museveni taking his first ever selfie last week. PPU PHOTO

President Museveni taking his first ever selfie last week. PPU PHOTO

Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni will every two weeks take questions from Ugandans on social media micro-blogging site, Twitter, an interaction many Ugandans hope to relish.

President Museveni over the weekend indicated that he would be interacting with Ugandans every two weeks using the hash tag #AskM7

“I thank you for welcoming me to Twitter. I will interact with you, and take questions, every two weeks.” President Museveni tweeted.

The recent weeks and months have seen the president increase activity on social media platforms especially twitter all thanks to his Special Assistant on Communications, Sarah Kagingo.

Last week, the Ugandan leader took a selfie of himself and sent out his first tweet using the handle @KagutaMuseveni whose followers have been increasing at alarming rate.

By the time of writing this story, his twitter followers were 26, 600 while his Facebook page had 74,032.

“I send my first tweet to salute Ugandan science students; they modified this vehicle’s engine to run on pure ethanol.” President Museveni sent out his first tweet after launching the Students’ Loan Scheme at Kyambogo University in the capital, Kampala.

The president was saluting Kyambogo University science students for making a vehicle that uses ethanol instead of petroleum.

He has been welcomed warmly on twitter by Uganda’s online community who say they cannot wait to have the session where they interact with him.

President Museveni now joins a host of African presidents like Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Malawi’s Joyce Banda and Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan whose social media platforms are highly interactive.

Analysts say president Museveni’s increased activity online is timely as it bring him closer to Uganda’s “smart phone” generation.

“Uganda is one of the youngest nations in the world. These young people spend most of their time online on platforms like Facebook, twitter and whatsapp, president Museveni’s arrival on these platforms will make them look at the president as one who wants to have a direct conversation with them” a social media pundit remarked.

Arinaitwe Rugyendo, a social media expert and media guru says “If @KagutaMuseveni‘s handle can do 2353 retweets, 973favs & 26k followers in under 4days, his might be the most discussed handle in #Uganda”