Twitter making its way back to Africa

More than two and a half 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 to the following shortcodes in each country go get started:

Nigeria: 40404 (Zain); 20644 (Glo Mobile)
Kenya: 8988 (Safaricom)
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.