Washington: The United States built Twitter-like social media programmes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that were models for a programme in Cuba aimed at encouraging open political discussion in the countries, Obama administration officials said Friday.

But like the programme in Cuba, which was widely ridiculed when it became public this month, the services in Pakistan and Afghanistan shut down after they ran out of money because the administration could not make them self-sustaining.

In all three cases, US officials appeared to lack a long-term strategy for the programmes beyond providing money to start them.

Administration officials also said Friday that there had been similar programmes in dozens of other countries, including a “Yes Youth Can” project in Kenya that was still active. Officials also said they had plans to start projects in Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Some programmes operate openly with the knowledge of foreign governments, but others have not been publicly disclosed.

The projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan were run by the State Department. All such programmes have come under greater scrutiny since the administration acknowledged the existence of the Twitter-like programme in Cuba, which ran from 2008 to 2012, when it abruptly ended, apparently because a $1.3 million (Dh4.77 million) contract to start up the text-messaging system ran out of money.

Administration officials provided no information about the purpose and scope of the Afghan programme, which had not been previously disclosed. In contrast, in 2009, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then secretary of state, announced the Pakistani programme during a meeting with students in Lahore, Pakistan. The State Department worked with Pakistani telecommunications companies to create the network.

Called ‘Humari Awaz’ or ‘Our Voices’, the programme was run out of the office of Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who died in 2010. The purpose of the programme, according to people who worked on it, was to provide a platform that used the text-messaging to help Pakistanis build mobile networks around their shared interests.

At its peak, State Department officials said, the programme cost about $1 million (Dh3.673 million) and connected more than 1 million people who sent more than 350 million messages. Users of the service could sign up using their personal information or remain anonymous.

The service was used by a diverse segment of Pakistani society, according to people who ran the programme. Farmers used it to share market prices. News organizations used it to reach readers. People used it to connect and share information such as cricket scores.

State Department officials enlisted the Pakistani government to promote the social media programme, which officials thought at the time might ease mounting tensions between the two countries. The United States provided billions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan, but officials in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations have accused elements of Pakistan’s spy agency of supporting the Taliban. Many in the Pakistani government have grown weary of US operations within its borders, including drone strikes and the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

Administration officials would not say when the Pakistani programme ended or what it ultimately accomplished.