Laid-off Twitter staff in Africa say they've been 'ghosted' and haven't received their promised severance pay months later, report says

• The workers Twitter laid off in Africa claim the company "ghosted" them, CNN reported.
• Twitter cut almost all of its African workforce, based in Ghana, in November after Elon Musk took control.

The workers that Twitter laid off in Ghana claim that they've been "ghosted" by Elon Musk's social-media company and haven't received their promised severance pay, CNN reported.

After Musk took control of the company in October 2022, he began a series of sweeping layoffs affecting thousands of workers. In early November, Twitter laid off almost all of its staff in Ghana, its only African location, just days after its physical office finally opened following a year of remote working, CNN reported at the time.

Staff were initially told that they were being laid off without information on their exit packet or next steps, per the outlet.

A new report by CNN details how in late May the laid-off workers were eventually offered three months of severance pay, the cost of repatriating foreign staff, and legal expenses incurred during negotiations with Twitter. The sources told CNN that though laid-off staff in other countries had more generous severance packages which included benefits, they were so fed up of waiting that they ultimately agreed to the package they were offered.

"Twitter was non-responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case so we felt we had no choice but to settle," one laid-off employee told CNN.

But communications with the company have since stopped and they're still waiting for severance pay, the laid-off staff told the outlet.

"They literally ghosted us," one of the laid-off employees told CNN.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment beyond an automated email response.

Musk has made drastic changes to Twitter's website and app since taking over, including reversing some account bans, charging users for blue verification checks, and introducing a subscription service, but he's also overhauled the company internally.

As well as stopping paying invoices and selling off office furniture, he has fired a number of execs and top managers and laid off the vast majority of Twitter's workforce. Quit rates rocketed, too.

As of early May, Twitter had just over 1,000 employees excluding contract workers, people familiar with the matter told Insider, compared to around 7,500 pre-acquisition.