Facebook is opening an office in Africa


Facebook will open an office in Africa next month in an attempt to get a larger fraction of the continent's population obsessively checking their news feeds instead of making actual friends. Mark Zuckerberg's team will set up shop in a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, Bloomberg Business reports.
"This is one of the places where our next billion users are coming from,” Facebook Vice President Nicola Mendelsohn, who oversees Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, told Bloomberg. "It would be a massive missed opportunity. Africa matters."
Out of more than one billion Africans, Bloomberg reports only 120 million currently use Facebook.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
-
Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A: a ‘magnificent’ exhibition
The Week Recommends The UK’s first show dedicated solely to the French queen explores the complex woman behind the ‘bling’
-
8 riveting museum exhibitions on view in the fall
The Week Recommends See Winslow Homer rarities and Black art reimagined
-
Crossword: September 18, 2025
The Week's daily crossword
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust ruling
Speed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Supreme Court allows social media age check law
Speed Read The court refused to intervene in a decision that affirmed a Mississippi law requiring social media users to verify their ages
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestone
Speed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two years
Speed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on X
Speed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'
Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellites
Speed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodes
Speed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff