ACCRA, Nov 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Twitter has fired nearly all its staff in Ghana, which was home to its only office in Africa.
The firm “is re-organising its operations as a result of a need to reduce costs,” read Twitter’s email.
The layoffs were part of a global staff cull introduced by new boss Elon Musk.
Last year, Twitter announced it was opening its first Africa office in Ghana in a bid to “be more immersed in the rich and vibrant communities that drive the conversations taking place every day across the African continent”, it said in an April 2021 statement.
At the time, Twitter had praised Ghana for “free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet” with the news even being welcomed by Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo who described it as “excellent”.
An anonymous employee said no redundancy was offered, unlike in some other countries, but their normal salary would be paid until the end of the contract at the beginning of next month, they said.
Under local law laid-off staff must be paid redundancy and should be given three months notice, as opposed to under a month in the case of the Ghanaian employees who have been told the “last day of employment will be 4 December 2022”.
Ghana staff were sent messages about the end of their contracts to their personal accounts, after being denied access to work emails.
There were just under 20 people employed in Ghana’s Twitter office who were working in various roles from curation and marketing to editorial.
Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has been laying off staff worldwide. He said he had “no choice” but to slash the company’s workforce as the firm was losing more than $4m a day. — NNN-AGENCIES
