Boing Boing: Google enters Kenya, hires first sub-Saharan African exec

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Google enters Kenya, hires first sub-Saharan African exec

South Africa is a more common first destination for international tech companies looking to establish a presence in Africa -- so why is Google opening its first major operation on the continent in Kenya?

Some of the answers are in this interview with Joseph Mucheru, former CEO of Kenyan ISP Wananchi, who will head up the new outpost. Asked what Google will do here, Mr. Mucheru explains:

Initially there will be three big things. Firstly, we want to optimise the use of Google applications in the region. We already have a lot of customers in the region but further development of the market is hindered by the absence of an international cable offering cheap bandwidth. Google understands that this is an impediment and is willing to go to the extent of buying international bandwidth that locals don't have to pay the current considerable premium they are.
The second thing they want to develop is their Maps product to make sure it has local information that is searchable and useful.
The third thing is using Google advertising in ways that can help monetize local content. Lots of people have done local content but most times it's flopped. We hope to show that there's a way of doing advertising that can support content. If we can do this, it will generate jobs and work.

Link to post on Russell Southwood's Africa-centric "Balancing Act" blog, via allafrica.com.

Here is a related post on the news from Global Voices: Link. Photo from White African, who blogged about it here. Related post on WebProNews,

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:17:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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