Twitter - Afrikan Heroes

Why Twitter Chose Ghana Ahead of Nigeria to Set Up Africa Office

April 13, 2021

The choice of Ghana to site its first Africa office came to many Nigerians as a shock because Nigeria is seen as the tech hub of Africa, and with other tech giants such as Facebook, and Google already established in the country. However, with the announcement made through a tweet by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey where he thanked the president of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo for his hospitality and also looking forward to a long lasting relationship between Ghana and Twitter, it became clear that Ghana is the choice. The tweet also included a link to a post on Twitter’s official blog written by Kayvon Beykpour, Product Lead at Twitter, and Uche Adegbite, Director, Product Management, Global Markets.

The blog post noted that Twitter’s mission is to serve the public conversation, and it’s essential, for the world and for Twitter, to increase the number of people who feel comfortable participating in it. “To do this, we need to make it easier for everyone to join in and provide more relevant experiences for people across the world”.

An excerpt from the blog reads: “Today, in line with our growth strategy, we’re excited to announce that we are now actively building a team in Ghana. To truly serve the public conversation, we must be more immersed in the rich and vibrant communities that drive the conversations taking place every day across the African continent.”

According to the post, Twitter will be hiring across several teams including product, design, engineering, marketing and communications. Successful applicants will be onboarded remotely until there is an opportunity to open a physical office in Ghana.

When Jack Dorsey had his African tour in 2019, he visited Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Ethiopia. For a lot of people this pointed at the possibility of a move into the continent. Now that the move is happening, one does wonder why Ghana was the choice of the countries visited.

Twitter’s blog post answers that question: “As a champion for democracy, Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate.” There are also reports that Twitter management is not happy with the way the Nigerian government handled the #EndSars protests which was heavily supported by Twitter. Twitter sees Nigeria as restraining human rights and freedom of expression especially by the armed forces and the Police and other para-military agencies. Moreso, Twitter believes that young people face a lot of harassment by law enforcement agencies in Nigeria.

On the business side, Twitter cites Ghana’s appointment to host the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as a key indicator of the country’s importance in establishing Twitter’s presence across Africa.

Regarding their move into this new market, investing in these markets is key and Twitter has already had partnerships with several impactful African organisations including Amref Health Africa in Kenya, Afrochella in Ghana, Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI) in Nigeria, and The HackLab Foundation in Ghana. The company says it plans to “continue to explore compelling ways we can use the positive power of Twitter to strengthen our communities through employee engagement, platform activation, and corporate giving.”

With Twitter on the continent, Africans can look forward to content and experiences more tailored to them. Twitter’s staff roles for the Ghana team can be found here.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Twitter Threatens to Ban Users with COVID-19 Misinformation Strike System

March 3, 2021

Twitter has warned that it will start labeling tweets that violate its COVID-19 guidance policy – this essentially includes content containing misinformation about the virus as well as vaccines. Since introducing its COVID-19 guidance, Twitter has removed more than 8,400 Tweets and challenged 11.5 million accounts worldwide. The new labels are expected to include links to official public health information or the Twitter rules – which is an attempt by the social platform to help users find credible info and partner with the experts.

In an official statement, Twitter says “we will begin applying labels to Tweets that may contain misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines, in addition to our continued efforts to remove the most harmful COVID-19 misleading information from the service.”

Twitter is also introducing a strike system that it hopes will slow down the spread of misinformation which it believes will help to educate the public on our policies and further reduce the spread of potentially harmful and misleading information on Twitter, particularly for repeated moderate and high-severity violations of our rules.

According to Twitter, repeated violations are enforced on the basis of the number of strikes an account has received. Strikes are punished as follows: One strike: no account-level action. Two strikes: 12-hour account lock.Three strikes: 12-hour account lock.Four strikes: 7-day account lock.Five or more strikes: permanent suspension.

Users will be notified directly when “a label or required Tweet removal results in additional account-level enforcement”.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Twitter to Label the Verified Accounts of Governments and Officials

February 13, 2021

Twitter is planning to label the verified accounts of governments and government officials. The social media network believes this will help users when interacting with these leaders and associated institutions by adding context to what people see on Twitter. According to an official blog post, Twitter says it will add labels to verified accounts of key government officials, including foreign ministers, institutional entities, ambassadors, official spokespeople, and key diplomatic leaders. At this time, our focus is on senior officials and entities that are the official voice of the state abroad;

Twitter has also officially launched its new Quote Tweets feature – after initially testing it just last week. The feature allows Twitter users to see how many times a specific tweet has been retweeted with a comment.

“Tweets about a Tweet add more to the conversation, so we’ve made them even easier to find,” says the social platform. “Retweets with comments are now called Quote Tweets and they’ve joined the Tweet detail view. Tap into a Tweet, then tap “Quote Tweets” to see them all in one place.”

According to The Verge, users have always been able to search for quote tweets by entering a tweet’s URL into Twitter’s search box, but a dedicated button makes the process much more convenient.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

#ENDSARS: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Backs Nigeria’s Youth, Calls For Solidarity Donation Through Bitcoins

October 15, 2020

Youths in Nigeria have been on the streets of the country’s major cities protesting against police brutality for more than 8 days now, but it appears they have just secured a very crucial voice. In a series of tweets, CEO and founder of social media network Twitter, Jack Dorsey, has not only destroyed claims — by tweeting an endorsement— in some quarters that the campaign, part of which is run on his online platform, is largely populated by a criminal group hinted as feministcoalition, he has also gone ahead to declare support for the #ENDSARS campaign, and called on his 4.7 million followers to donate bitcoins in support.

“Donate via #Bitcoin to help #EndSARS,” he tweeted.

A Regular Friend Of Nigeria

This is not the first time Dorsey is showing support for Africa’s most populous nation, home to over 40 million users of his social media platform Twitter. In 2019, Dorsey paid a visit to Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Ethiopia where he held talks on bitcoin and blockchain which he said had a great future on the continent.

He had also earlier revealed plans to temporarily relocate to Africa this year but for the coronavirus pandemic.

“ With everything happening with the world, particularly coronavirus,” he had said, “I have to reconsider what’s going on and what that means for me and for the company. I had been working on my plans where I’d work decentralized, as my team and I do when we travel, but in light of COVID-19 and everything else going on I need to reevaluate. Either way we’ll continue to pursue opportunities in Africa.”

Nigerian Youth Have Been Fighting A Killer Police Squad

For the past eight days now, Nigerians, a majority of whom are young people, have been on the streets of the country’s major cities demanding the total scrapping of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit— renamed Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) — a Nigerian Police Force unit under the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department headed by the country’s Deputy Inspector General of Police, notorious for extra-judicial murder and extortion of civilians.

“Ending SARS is important for the Nigerian tech industry,” tweeted Mark Essien, CEO and co-founder of Hotels.ng, a leading hospitality startup in Nigeria and one of the many startups in the country hugely affected by the police’s abuse of power.

“Your coders and other techies are disproportionately affected,” he said. “It is in your businesses best interest to get SARS stopped. Staying neutral is the same as supporting what’s happening right now.”

A gruesome photo shared by one Egbewunmi Mayowa, a Senior Software Engineer at Interwitch, Africa’s second startup company to achieve one billion dollar valuation captured the horror vividly. In the picture, Mayowa’s skin appears deeply cut into, peeled off and permanently charred, a memory he would carry with him for a very long time.

“SARS did this to me!” He said. “My only sin was carrying a laptop bag. I am just one of the few people privileged to be alive #EndSarsNow #EndPoliceBrutality ⁦”

Targeting Investors Too

The ordeals extend beyond young people, startups or their employees to even investors in Nigeria. According to Aubrey Hruby, an Africa-focused investor and Partner at Baylis Emerging Markets as well as Co-Founder of the Africa Expert Network, it was a nightmare when she brought some venture capitalists from Egypt to Nigeria in 2019.

“It is high time,” she said , “…they were completely shaken down and robbed by the police as they were leaving the country after an amazing week of meeting with stellar Nigerian entrepreneurs.”

Dorsey #ENDSARS Dorsey #ENDSARS Dorsey #ENDSARS

A Massive Support From The Nigerian Startup Community

As the protests rage on, Nigerian startups are increasingly playing active roles, largely in support of their workforce and customers, a majority of whom are young people.

“Startups have coughed out almost N10m to support #EndSarsProtests in 30 hours,” said Oreoluwa Shonibare, co-founder, Wii CREATE, a Lagos-based content creation startup. “Not just tweets, but an active costly support. That’s showing they care. Almost none have (sic) 1,000,000 active users on their products. Nigerian banks have 10m+ (+40% youths) users and still NO TWEET.”

Flutterwave is one such startup company that is going as far as fundraising.

“So many of us are affected by this injustice,” Olugbenga Agboola, CEO and co-founder of the cross-border payment startup said. “Flutterwave staff have also been victims of the brutality of SARS, so we started an internal fund so we can help victims of SARS and support protesters.”

So far, the startup has raised more than ₦10m.

A New Chapter?

With the protests persisting and government promising reforms, the country’s startup ecosystem, filled with young people, is on the frontline, and is severely threatened if no tangible reforms as demanded by the protesters are implemented.

Amnesty International says government’s promise to just reform without scrapping the notorious SARS unit is no longer sustainable.

“2015 — SARS will be reformed; 2016 — SARS will be restructured; 2017 — SARS will be reorganized; 2018 — SARS will be reformed; 2019 — SARS will be disbanded; 2020 — SARS brutalize Nigerians more,” the organisation noted in a tweet.

According to the most recent report from the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, between 2014 and 2019, Nigeria accounted for 14% of all total VC funding deals done in Africa, just behind Kenya (at 18%) and South Africa (at 21%). Nigeria also houses Africa’s most valuable startup ecosystem — Lagos — which according to Startup Genome, in its Report, was worth $2 billion as of 2017.

Whatever happens in the coming days will not only shape the future of a lot of the country’s youth population, but will also open a new chapter for its nascent startup ecosystem which employs a substantial amount of Nigeria’s young people.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

Africa is the Future, Says Twitter CEO

November 30, 2019

Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey has hinted that he will spend most of next year in Africa because Africa is the best kept secret that will define the future in virtually every aspect of e-commerce. The Twitter chief who said he has set his sights set on Africa said that he felt a tinge of sadness leaving the continent after his visit promised that he will be in the continent for 3-6 months from mid 2020. Grateful I was able to experience a small part.

Uganda Introduces e-Commerce Tax

Dorsey who has been visiting Ethiopia for a business meeting with entrepreneurs and cryptocurrency professionals while he also paid a visit to Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa was in Ethiopia to hold talks on bitcoin and blockchain which he said has a great future in the continent. He tweeted that his move will be more focused on the business around cryptocurrency. It is unclear whether the work will be more tailored to Twitter or Square.

Analysts say that Africa has been on priority for many top CEO’s of tech firms from across the world basically because the continent offers great opportunities, the youngest populations, and huge head room for growth as these form parts of the bigger trends top tech companies are looking to explore in various countries within the continent.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry