Days after pledging to invest $350 million to create over 300,000 jobs in Africa, ride-hailing platform Bolt has laid off 17 of its 70 employees in Nigeria.
The job cuts reportedly came as a surprise and affected mostly junior and mid-senior members of the operations team.
A few days ago, Bolt CEO Markus Villig pledged to invest over $350 million in African operations to expand the platform and create opportunities for over 300,000 new drivers and couriers to join the platform in 2023.
Moreover, the company had told the employees that there would be an internal team restructuring and the creation of new roles and departments.
Naturally, the employees were shocked to learn that 24% of the team would be laid off due to redundancies. Sources confirmed that the layoffs were indeed not performance-based.
Bolt’s severance terms include one month’s pay, three months of health insurance, and in some cases, leave allowance.
