• Twitter suddenly stopped communicating with its fired African staff in May just as it told them it would pay them severance packages.
• All the staff at Twitter’s Ghana offices, its only African arm, were fired last year via email and were offered no compensation.
• Reports indicate that Twitter has stopped paying rent at its physical office spaces amid lawsuits and slow revenue gain.

Seven months after eliminating the staff from its brand new African headquarters in Accra, Ghana, Twitter has yet to pay the severance packages it promised.

In November last year, Twitter cut nearly half of its worldwide workforce after Elon Musk purchased the social media firm for $41 billion and then took power. These cuts included all of its employees from Twitter Africa, who were fired unceremoniously via email and were not offered any compensation.

During the time, Twitter was offering cut senior staff severance packages, and would eventually begin cutting a deal with its African staff to pay them three months severance. This never came to fruition. According to CNN, Twitter has ceased communications with former staff in Africa. “They literally ghosted us,” one former staffer is quoted as saying.

TechCabal reports that lawyers representing the Twitter Africa team were in constant contact with Twitter headquarters, up until May 2023 when suddenly all talks halted just as the deal was being finalised.

African staff had reluctantly agreed to severance packages without benefits after being cut due to Musk’s aggressive profits turnaround strategy. This deal was apparently worth less than what former staff in other countries were being offered.

“Twitter was non-responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case so we felt we had no choice but to settle,” said another former employee.

The staff still have not received any severance. Ghana’s Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations is investigating the matter.

Twitter in the meanwhile is dealing with several lawsuits issued by former employees, alleging that the company owes millions in contractually-obligated bonuses and severance packages. The company may be having money problems.

Recently, Musk said, in a Tweet, that “We’re still negative cash flow” and that the company has lost 50 percent of its advertising revenues, translating to millions of dollars. Critics point to the platform’s policies around controversial pundits and baffling decisions like “rate-limiting” tweets as reasons why advertisers are in exodus.

Several publications have reported that the social media company has stopped paying rent at its physical office spaces. Last month it was handed an eviction notice at its offices in Colorado due to unpaid rent. Twitter may simply not have enough money to pay bonuses and severance packages, or rather it is applying what money it has towards finding ways to make more money instead.

For the staff in Africa, the last they heard from the American firm was in May shortly after settlement was agreed. Twitter may be in breach of Ghanaian labour laws because of how it has handled the termination of its employees in the country, a team of 12 or so individuals.