On the 12th of April 2021, Twitter’s co-founder and product lead Kayvon Beykpour announced that in line with its growth strategy, the microblogging site had started actively building a team in Ghana, their first office in Africa. We were elated, over a billion Africans would start to feel seen and involved in one of the biggest microblogging platforms in the world, not to mention the tech talents that would get jobs in the continent.
That joy was short-lived. Soon after billionaire and upcoming comedian, Elon Musk acquired Twitter, murphy’s law followed, and the newly formed team was jobless. Their work laptops and emails were disabled and all they got was one brief copy-paste email.
The unsigned company-wide email, seen by Techspace Africa, instructed all employees to vacate the brand-new Accra office and not to contact anyone that has anything to do with Twitter.
Also Read: Twitter’s Verification Debate: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
While the employees will receive compensation and benefits until 5 December 2022, the email to other employees in other parts of the world are getting 3 months of severance, the African employees in Ghana who had just recently worked at the office for 1 week did not get any communication about the same.
This is a pretty sad turn of events given the whole ‘Elon Musk an African is at the helm’. Ghanaian lawyers have said the termination is in violation of the countries laws so expect a few lawsuits to follow.
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