Twitter, the global chat media company, opened its first African office in Ghana, Agence France Presse reported.

The company is hiring 11 people in the engineering, marketing and communications fields, Twitter said in the statement. The company joins Facebook and other social media companies in moving into the continent, home to the world’s youngest population.

“Today, in line with our strategy, we’re excited to announce that we are now actively building a team in Ghana,” Twitter said. On a visit to Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa in 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Africa will “define the future.”

Ghana is vying with Kenya and other African countries to build viable tech sectors as the continent seeks to provide jobs for millions of youth in a continent whose progress over the past two decades was halted by the corona virus last year. Growth contracted by two percent, and is expected to rebound by three percent this year.

Twitter said the Ghana team would work remotely while it sought an office. It said the presence of the Secretariat of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and Ghana’s support for free speech and online freedoms made it first choice.

President Nana Akufo-Addo applauded Twitter’s choice, adding that this would be the company’s Africa headquarters although this wasn’t in the Twitter statement.

“The choice of Ghana as HQ for Twitter’s Africa operations is EXCELLENT news,” the president said in a tweet. “This is the start of a beautiful partnership between Twitter and Ghana, which is critical for the development of Ghana’s hugely important tech sector.”