News — Social Media

Accra will be the site of Twitter’s Africa headquarters starting from 2021. This was contained in an announcement by the CEO of the global social media giant, Jack Dorsey, in a tweet on Monday morning.

“Twitter is now present on the continent. Thank you Ghana and @NAkufoAddo. #TwitterGhana”, Dorsey’s tweet read, thanking Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo.

Ghana’s president also welcomed Twitter, tweeting: “The choice of Ghana as HQ for Twitter’s Africa operations is EXCELLENT news. Gov’t and Ghanaians welcome very much this announcement and the confidence reposed in our country.”

For now, Twitter staff will be working remotely, a consequence of the convenience tech jobs provide in the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is foreseeable that Twitter will establish a brick-and-mortar office even though the company has said it is committed to letting workers in other countries work permanently from home.

Why Ghana?

Twitter curtly explained why it chose Ghana:

As a champion for democracy, Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate. Furthermore, Ghana’s recent appointment to host The Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area aligns with our overarching goal to establish a presence in the region that will support our efforts to improve and tailor our service across Africa. 

But this choice also follows working visits Dorsey took of Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa in 2019. It was rumored he was looking for where to establish Twitter’s first African office but that was never confirmed. Dorsey has however spoken of his belief that the next biggest questions in the automation economy, such as cryptocurrency, will be pertinent in Africa.

Twitter has revealed 12 hiring positions in Ghana, as at the time of going to press, including Senior Communications Manager, Senior Content Partnerships Manager and a Media Operations Analyst.

Jeresneyka Rose woke up one day to tones of congratulatory messages from family and friends on social media. She was being cheered for striking a deal with Walmart to sell her artwork on the platform.

Worldwide, many businesses strive to have their products listed on Walmart for sale and so the buzz around the sale of her painting on Walmart was understandable.

However, the unfortunate aspect of the move was that her artwork, a digital portrait of late rapper Nipsey Hussle, was being sold on Walmart without her permission. The multibillion-dollar firm sells the artwork in its stores for $14.99.

“People were tagging me on social media to congratulate me on a collaboration that I had no idea about,” Rose told Yahoo Life. “I would have never known had it not been for social media.”

Hussle was fatally shot two years ago in a parking lot in South Los Angeles and Rose created the portrait in his memory. She published her tribute to the late rapper on her social media with an option to download. She, however, added five watermarks to prevent theft. Shockingly, Walmart allegedly removed all but one of them.

“They edited the picture and removed my signature and changed the background to yellow, but my watermark was still in the hair,” Rose told Southeast Express. “I guess they couldn’t get that off, and that’s what saved me.”

Among other things, Rose is exploring the potential of legal action to get her due, noting that this is not the first time an artist’s work has been put up for sale without his or her consent by big corporations.

She told Yahoo Life: “I’m not well-versed when it comes to things like that, but there’s so many other artists out there that this happens to and they never find out — they never get their due diligence, so I just would like to see what the process looks like. I just know right is right and wrong is wrong — and this is wrong.”

Rose, of Colorado, is the founder of Art By Rizzo. According to her, she started taking her artwork seriously after trying out some corporate jobs and noticing that she could no longer fit in. She now makes much of her money from her artwork in which she sells online or at community events in Colorado Springs, her hometown. She told The Express that she was financially hit by the pandemic and that she found Walmart making a profit off her back egregious. 

Rose said she wants to use her predicament to bring to fore how big corporations are exploiting the artwork of small businesses, especially Black-led ones, for monetary gains. 

“It’s not just the fact that it’s one corporation — this happens every day to black artists and people of color and women, and impoverished people that don’t have the resources and funds to fight for themselves,” she said. “We don’t have a standing chance. It’s bigger than me.”

Black Deaf families have existed long before Nakia Charmay Smith took to TikTok to share videos on their dialect. The Black American Sign Language (BASL) is a dialect of the traditional American Sign Language (ASL) and so they have some similarities. What made Smith’s videos on TikTok go viral was how she and her family with hereditary deafness educated her followers on the history of BASL.

Smith is from a four-generation family of people who are deaf. The 22-year-old is bringing a much-needed representation that is lacking among Black deaf people as she creates awareness about her community and their history one lesson at a time on the video-sharing platform.

The TikToker focuses on American Sign Language (ASL) and BASL while educating people on how best to interact with people of the deaf community.

Her videos have raked over a million views on Tik Tok and over 900,000 views on Twitter, and they usually feature her family, particularly Jake, her deaf 95-year-old grandfather. Jake encourages her to continue sharing insights from their community with the world and the responses have been majorly positive.

“I felt like a lot of people didn’t’ know about BASL until my video went viral. They were really curious and wanted to learn more about BASL and history. I told my grandfather that the video went viral, and he said, ‘Keep it going’,” Smith said.

A recent partnership with Netflix gives more insight into how BASL came about. The giant video streaming platform reached out to Smith after her viral TikTok video for the project and now thanks to Smith, many now know that BASL was created because of segregated schools.

“It was developed by Black deaf people in the 1800s and 1900s during segregation. For reference, the first American school for the deaf was created in 1817 but only started admitting Black students in 1952. So as a result, Black communities had a different means of language socialization, and BASL was born,” she explained.

Experts in sign language have lauded the young college student for her revolutionary work which encourages people to learn to sign because it is prudent to have culturally relevant sign language interpreters across all areas.

For years, Black people have received unwavering criticism for not using the ‘standardized’ ASL. The Black deaf community has been fighting for years to get BASL recognized just like it was with African American Vernacular English (AAVE).

“It is important that we recognize and celebrate the diverse deaf communities and the variations within American Sign Language,” said Jan Withers, Director of North Carolina DHHS’ Division of Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. “Understanding and appreciating Black ASL helps to create an inclusive environment.” 

When asked what the biggest difference between the two dialects was, Smith said, “BASL got seasoning.”

Smith is playing her part by teaching BASL while preserving Black deaf stories in the process. She records her speech therapy sessions with her brother, increasing people’s understanding of what it means to be Black and deaf.