Italian based top club AS Roma became the first major European club to launch a Swahili account on 16th October 2019.
AS Roma announced their Swahili account via all their other major accounts available in several languages
The account will be managed by an Admin who will be situated in Kenya.
The birth of the Swahili account came when AS Roma congratulated Eliud Kipchoge’s INEOS Challenge, before a concerned AS Roma fan suggested for a Swahili account.
Then the club’s president Jim Pallotta used his own personal Twitter account to confirm that the club would indeed launch an official Roma Swahili account.
“We’re delighted to launch AS Roma Swahili on Twitter today,” Said Paul Rogers, Head of Strategy at AS Roma.
“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. Considering the passion the fans have for European football, it’s actually surprising that no football club outside of Africa has attempted to communicate daily in Swahili and Pidgin before on social media.
“The new Twitter account will allow us to directly engage with these fans in a way that suits them and is consistent with our strategy of breaking down the communication barriers between the club and our global fan base.”
The launch of the new Swahili account means AS Roma now communicate in 14 different languages on social media – with official accounts also in Italian, English, Arabic, Indonesian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Bosnian, Turkish, Dutch, Farsi, Pidgin and Chinese.
