Free Reads

Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Wants To Invest In Nigerian Startups – Plus Twitter Just Offered To Hire This Nigerian Developer

By
 |  November 9, 2019

Since the co-founder and CEO of Twitter and Square, Jack Dorsey, touched down in Lagos, Nigeria, as part of his listening and learning tour across Africa, he’s been on the move.

When Dorsey first announced his intention to visit four countries in Africa including Nigeria, the vibrant local tech community — which is known to be particularly well represented on Twitter — was always going to give Dorsey and his team a swell time. And they sure have had a great time since they arrived on Thursday evening.

Dorsey said he was going to “spend a lot of time with entrepreneurs” during his time in Africa. And that’s pretty much what he’s been up to since arriving Lagos. After Thursday’s dinner with Nigerian tech entrepreneurs, Dorsey and the Twitter team started things off on Friday by visiting the offices of Co-creation Hub (CcHub) in Nigeria.

While at CcHub, the big tech CEO from Silicon Valley meet with founders and developers in the technology in Lagos. As part of his visit, Dorsey also had a Q&A session with startups from the CcHub portfolio where he learnt about their work and shared his experience on building both Twitter and Square.

CcHub’s RelearnNG and SafeOnlineNG also demonstrated some of its practices and the impact of their work in edtech and digital security to the Twitter team.

From there, Dorsey and team stopped by at the University of Lagos where he took questions from students and staff.

Andela was up next on the itinerary. The Twitter CEO visited the offices of Andela Nigeria where he met with scores of developers and players in the Nigerian tech ecosystem.

From there, Dorsey and the rest of the team were hosted to a Townhall Meeting at the offices of Nigerian tech media platform, Techpoint, where they talked about Twitter’s plans to “decentralise its workforce in 6 countries in the continent and having half of its engineers outside of San Francisco.”

Dorsey, who is something of a Bitcoin enthusiast, also acknowledged Nigeria’s cryptocurrency strides.

Michael Montano, Head of Engineering, Twitter, reiterated the company’s commitment to helping people grow their business on the platform.

The Techpoint Townhall implored people to join in and ask Dorsey and the team questions via the Techpoint Twitter handle. This writer, tweeting with the handle, @ZekkyHenry, asked if Dorsey and Twitter were thinking about investing in Nigerian startups.

The answer from Dorsey was a resounding yes, though that was as far as he went with the question. Specifics were not given.

Perhaps the highlight of the evening came when Kayvon Beykpour, Product Lead, Twitter, announced that Twitter would welcome Nigerian developer, Dara Tobi Oladosu, to its team.

Oladosu built a popular Twitter bot, @QuotedReplies, in December 2018 after he got the hang of the ability to copy a tweet’s link and search Twitter for its quoted replies.

@QuotedReplies is a Twitter-based bot that helps Twitter users find quoted replies of tweets without having to go through the hassle of copying, pasting, and searching.

@QuotedReplies currently has users from all over the world, including Nigeria, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the United States. Having only launched in November 2018, the bot’s Twitter page currently boasts nearly 45,000 followers while working quite well too.

Most Read

Premium
Gig Workers Are Driving Ethiopia’s EV Push With Help From A Fledgling Startup

On the busy streets of Addis Ababa, a quiet yet powerful shift is

Premium
African Roots, Global Routes: The VC Helping Startups Crack The New Code

Originally slated to unfold at Moonshot 2024, where “Building for the World” headlined

Premium
Investors Are Divided On Africa’s Climate Tech Boom As Hopes & Hype Collide

Africa’s climate tech scene is witnessing a massive influx of capital, as billions