AS Roma Launches Swahili Twitter Page

Italian football giant AS Roma have launched a Swahili language Twitter page.  The club has said the page will help it further engage with fans in Eastern, Southern and Western Africa.

The move follows on from the launch of AS Roma Pidgin, which the club went live with back in March.  That page currently has around 20,000 followers.

Roma’s English language page has been known to post Tweets in Swahili from time to time, most recently congratulating Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge after he broke the 2-hour marathon barrier in Vienna last week.

Following the Tweet, the club’s chairman Jim Pallotta said he was inundated with messages from fans asking to launch a Swahili Twitter page.

Paul Rogers, Head of Strategy at the club said “[w]e’re delighted to launch AS Roma Swahili on Twitter today.  After we launched a Pidgin account in March, we’ve been inundated with requests from fans in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and from other Eastern and South-Eastern African countries asking for an official Swahili account”.

The launch of the page makes Roma the first European club to do so, something many may find surprising owing to the popularity of European football in the African continent.  

With this latest addition, Roma now tweets in 14 different languages on social media.