Mr Jack Dorsey, the Co-founder/Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, was at the popular Information Technology Co-Creation Hub (CCHub) in Yaba, Lagos, Friday morning, as part of his tour of four African countries. Dorsey planned to visit Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, and South Africa. He arrived Nigeria Thursday. He had announced via his Twitter handle earlier in October that he was “headed to Africa for all of November- Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa; going to spend a lot of time with entrepreneurs.”
He twitted “So grateful to finally be in Nigeria,” when he touched down in Lagos. After meeting with tech-startups at the Yaba CCHub, Dorsey shared pictures on his verified handle, and added: “Talking with the entrepreneurs of @Cc Hub!” Dorsey is visiting Nigeria for the first time and he was billed to spend few days with tech-startups that are using Twitter handle for broadcast, and also to understudy the Nigerian tech space that so much have been said about in the area of technology innovation. The Twitter CEO heaped praises on the Nigerian tech-startups in Yaba and urged them to dream big.
Having spent less than 24 hours on Nigerian soil, Dorsey has already picked up a greeting in Yoruba, ‘Bawo ni’, meaning ‘How are you?’ He was also hosted to a welcome dinner on Thursday night, where he met the likes of media personality, Tolu Oniru-Demuren, popularly called Toolz, former government official, Dr. Joe Abah, among others. Toolz, Abah and Dorsey shared photos on their respective Twitter handles. Toolz also shared a video, where the Twitter CEO spoke in Yoruba. Captioning the photo, he tweeted, Jack said: “Great dinner with some new friends.”
However, Dorsey gave the Nigerian media a shocker when he declined to talk to the press. Before his arrival, journalists were on ground at the CCHub, waiting as early as 7.30am, but as soon as he arrived at about 9.30am, he was quickly taken in for breakfast, where he was informed that he would be addressing the media, but it was gathered that he declined. Although he eventually came out to see the journalists, he still refused to give even a brief on the purpose of his visit to Nigeria.
It would be recalled also that Mr Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, visited Nigeria for a few days in similar format. During that visit Zuckerberg said he “met with developers and entrepreneurs and learnt about the start-up ecosystem in Nigeria.” Zuckerberg’s first notable stop was same Co-Creation Hub (CCHub), in Yaba, Lagos’ Silicon Valley-style ground zero for start-ups. Over the years, CCHub has served as a start-up incubator and accelerator, housing successful start-ups such as BudgIT, a civic enterprise, which focuses on accountability and transparency in government budgets. While at CCHub, Zuckerberg also met with young kids attending a summer coding camp.
