Twitter has opened its first African office in Ghana to grow its African presence.
The company is actively looking for talents to fill 12 roles remotely, with a particular focus on content creation, product development, engineering, and operations. Some of these roles are data specialist, curation lead, senior content partnerships manager, and analyst media operations.
This move is coming 16 months after Jack Dorsey, Twitter Co-founder and CEO, and other top execs, toured Africa in November 2019, visiting Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Ethiopia.
One of the highlights of the visit was Dorsey’s interest in hiring African talents to work remotely. Although the team didn’t expressly say that a physical office was on the cards, Dorsey did say that he’d return to the continent to live for six months sometime in 2020. However, he could not follow through on his plan because of the pandemic.
Opting for Ghana was a surprise considering the team’s comments about the Nigerian market in 2019. Parag Agrawal, Twitter CTO, said the company saw an opportunity for technical talents in the country.
“There’s a massive opportunity here for Twitter because Nigeria has many technical talents, and impactful public conversations happen here too.”
In an official statement, Twitter disclosed its reasons for choosing Ghana: free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet. However, it is already in partnership with local communities in Kenya and Nigeria.
Interestingly, some of the roles Twitter is looking to fill suggest that the expansion might have been planned with the Nigerian market in mind. It appears that Nigerian startups’ constant regulatory battles influenced the company’s choice.
Nevertheless, the region should expect more investment from the tech giant.
– Techpoint