Coming to Africa No More: Jack Dorsey Shelves His ‘Living in Africa’ Plans Amid Coronavirus and Investors Threat

In his announcement yesterday, Twitter boss, Jack Dorsey has revealed that he is currently reevaluating his plans to spend part of the year 2020 in Africa. This means the Twitter and Square CEO may no longer be coming to the continent to live for 3 months as planned.

According to the CEO, one of his reasons is the obvious coronavirus outbreak. The other reason is “everything else going on”. As that is open to interpretation, maybe everything else is the threat to his leadership by a dissatisfied board.

I had been working on my plans where I’d work decentralized, as my team and I do when we travel, but in light of COVID-19 and everything else going on I need to reevaluate. Either way we’ll continue to pursue opportunities in Africa.

— Twitter Investor Relations (@TwitterIR) March 5, 2020

You’d recall that soon after visiting the continent on his listening and learning tour last year, Jack tweeted his intentions to come and stay in Africa. According to the tweet, the Twitter boss had plans to stay in for about 3 – 6 months in mid 2020.

This was perceived differently by many, including Twitter investors who felt he wasn’t giving Twitter the necessary attention. Now in his announcement, Jack admitted he made a ‘mistake’ and should have provided more context as to why he plotted the move to Africa.

Africa will be one of the most populated continents in the next 20-30 yrs, the tech innovation is incredible w/ a large portion of the population still coming onto the internet. Huge opportunity especially for young people to join Twitter + for us to learn to best serve them.

— Twitter Investor Relations (@TwitterIR) March 5, 2020

According to him, the continent will be one of the most populated continents in the next few decades, and with a booming tech ecosystem, it will be a “huge opportunity” for young people to join Twitter.

However, it looks like this plan will not happen – at least not anytime soon.

This will be Dorsey’s first public statement since reports emerged that major investor, Elliot Management, might be pushing for his replacement.

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According to the hedge fund investor, Jack hasn’t focused enough as Twitter CEO as he is also the CEO/founder of payments company, Square. And the fact that he currently runs 2 tech companies, and wants to disappear to Africa for about 6 months only compounded the worries.

Thus, when Dorsey stated “everything else going on” as reason for canceling his temporal relocation to African, one might not be wrong to conclude he’s most likely referring to that. And it may seem that the tech CEO is finally yielding to pressure.

Moving forward though, Jack and the team at Twitter promise to continue pursuing opportunities in Africa.

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