• TikTok has cut around half of its African team, with employees affected in Nigeria and South Africa.
• The company says the layoffs are not a reaction to potentially being kicked out of its US market.
• TikTok South Africa was hiring new staff as of November 2023, months before global layoffs were announced.

Employees of TikTok on the African continent received a series of layoffs, quietly enacted in June 2024, which affected the company’s teams in South Africa and Nigeria – the company’s only offices on the continent.

According to a report from TechCabal, both locations employed around 100 people in total, but now this number has been cut down to half across the two countries. Affected employees were in departments like content operation, marketing, and trust and safety.

Employees of the company in Africa are now expecting yet another wave of layoffs in the third quarter of the year, according to two employees who spoke to the publication. TikTok announced global layoffs in May, especially those involved in marketing and operations, which has been reflected in the cuts we’re seeing in Africa.

The Information reported that roughly 1 000 employees worldwide could be affected by the cuts.

The company has publically said on many occasions that the layoffs are unrelated to the mounting legal and political pressure TikTok and its parent company ByteDance is facing in the United States. Instead the layoffs have been allegedly in the works for at least a year.

“The changes are not a reaction to anything,” an unnamed executive told TechCabal. “It is a function of assessing the business on an ongoing basis and making necessary changes.”

The TikTok South Africa team was looking to hire for high-level roles as recently as November 2023.

Africa’s tech landscape has been no stranger to mass layoffs from high-profile tech firms. The largest round of job cuts came to Nigerian ecommerce powerhouse Jumia, which canned 900 workers in November 2022.

Ecommerce has been one of the largest hit industries when it comes to layoffs in African tech, followed by fintech, all seeking to adjust their employees with potential waning revenues amid worsening market conditions.

[Image – Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash]