President Muhammadu Buhari’s government banned Twitter in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country in June, and repercussions are high. They have dealt a blow to its revenue ambitions.
According to Netblocks Cost of Shutdown Tools, which uses the classic Free Digital App GDP impact technique, Nigeria has lost a minimum of $243 million within the past 51 days since the Twitter shutdown.
Despite this, Twitter on Thursday posted stronger-than-expected earnings for the second quarter because of growing advertising demand across all geographic regions and kinds of ad products.
The San Francisco-based company earned $65.6 million, or 8 cents per share, within the April-June quarter. That’s up from a loss of $1.38 billion, or $1.75 per share, a year earlier. In Nigeria, Twitter recorded $1.19 billion in revenue in Q2 2021, against the $683.4 million Twitter reported for the corresponding period of Q2 2020.
Data source: Africa news