Twitter is Slowly Coming Back to Africa
Over 2.5 years ago Twitter shut down all operations in Africa. Back then, in August of 2008, it really didn’t matter too much as the penetration rates for the service in Africa, and most of the world, were negligible. A lot has changed since then as Twitter has become a defacto communications too, and in many ways a new communications protocol, all over the globe.
Now, they really hadn’t “shut down” as the service is accessible always via the internet. What they had shut down was text messaging – SMS, due to non-sustainable business relationships with the mobile operators in each country. Since then, the Twitter team has grown, and their ambitions beyond North America, the UK and India have increased as well.
In Africa, three countries have it working; Nigeria, Kenya and Madagascar (Note: there used to be a fourth, but Cameroon has banned mobile Twitter as they go towards elections). Just send a text message with the word “start” to the following shortcodes in each country go get started:
Nigeria: 40404 (Airtel); 20644 (Glo Mobile)
Kenya: 8988 (Safaricom); 40404 (Airtel)
Madagascar: 40404 (VIP)
The Twitter team is working on relationships for expanding SMS service throughout a lot of countries in Africa. How those deals are structured with the network operators and why they’re slow in coming online with the service isn’t yet known.
You can find out which countries do have Twitter’s mobile SMS service on this page. You can also keep up with Jessica Verilli (@Jess), in charge of Corporate Development & Strategic Initiatives at Twitter, and the one who has been the most visibly active on the continent.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Good to know at last more and more African will be represented on Twitter.
[...] good news is that, as White African observes, Twitter is working on expanding its relationship with African countries. In 2008 Twitter decided [...]
[...] The competition is increasingly about the customers, and what tasks they seek to complete on their devices. Simply building the right apps/content/service to meet that need won’t be enough: it will become a matter of getting the purpose, the platform and the price just right for each demographic. Market creation and customer education will drive each other in tandem. Operators such as Safaricom in Kenya and MTN in Uganda are trying to hit just such a sweet spot with the launch of the IDEOS, an Android based, Huawei built smartphone available for less than US$100. Easy to use and bundled with enough airtime and data to last a couple of months of regular use, its popularity in Africa is already beginning to resemble that of the latest iPad in the United States. On the other hand, Facebook has taken the democratic approach of attempting to reach every single GSM phone in the world with the recent launch of a SIM embedded application that works by SMS, while Twitter is slowly enabling SMS-based access again in Africa. [...]
[...] probably unlikey to happen, due to low numbers of twitter users. However, in his post – Twitter is Slowly Coming Back to Africa – Hash puts forward some convincing arguments that the service is experiencing a resurgence. [...]
I only used twitter with my smart phone in the US. Now I have a more standard mobile phone here in Nairobi, so I guess I need to figure out how to use it with twitter…
[...] With Facebook rolling out a sim-based app, radio talk show hosts asking listeners to text in and Twitter starting SMS services in Africa, it is clear the point needs no [...]
[...] Twitter is Slowly Coming Back to Africa (whiteafrican.com) [...]
[...] White African blog: whiteafrican.com/2008/08/14/what-twitters-global-failure-means-for-africa/ and whiteafrican.com/2011/03/09/twitter-is-slowly-coming-back-to-africa/ , accessed May 2011 as well as http://www.oafrica.com/web/twitter/ , accessed May 2011. [6] For an [...]
[...] Davon erfahren bei Whiteafrican.com. [...]
[...] that Twitter is not available via SMS text messaging outside of Nigeria, Madagascar and Kenya? (The White African Blog). Twitter was supposed to be available in Cameroon, but Paul Biya’s regime (he has since [...]
[...] phones. M-Farm (Kenya) allows farmers to retrieve pricing information. Even Facebook and Twitter can be used based on text [...]
[...] Market creation and customer education will drive each other in tandem. Operators such as Safaricom in Kenya and MTN in Uganda are trying to hit just such a sweet spot with the launch of the IDEOS, an Android based, Huawei built smartphone available for less than US$100. Easy to use and bundled with enough airtime and data to last a couple of months of regular use, its popularity in Africa is already beginning to resemble that of the latest iPad in the United States. On the other hand, Facebook has taken the democratic approach of attempting to reach every single GSM phone in the worldwith the recent launch of a SIM embedded application that works by SMS, while Twitter is slowly enabling SMS-based access again in Africa. [...]
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