Google for the first time will be investing in an African product development centre in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. The company aims to position itself to serve its growing base of internet users on the continent.
It also aims that by the end of this decade, the continent would host 800 million internet users along with a third of the world’s youth population.
Reports said that this facility will focus on making the user experience better for smartphone users in the region while efforts will be made to increase the reliability of internet availability.
Suzanne Frey, Vice President for Products and Nitin Gajaria, Managing Director – Sub-Saharan Africa, in a joint statement, said, “Google is right now hiring engineers, product managers, user experience designers and researchers to staff the new centre.” The company has said that they will hire close to a hundred staff members across a diverse set of expertise over the coming two years for this facility.
As for investment, the country will be investing $1 billion in several projects across the continent over the span of the next five years as stated by the CEO Sundar Pichai. In an event in October 2021,
Furthermore, Google has already an artificial intelligence centre in Accra, Ghana. Not only Alphabet, Microsoft too has been making its own technological hubs in Kenya and Nigeria by investing almost $100 million. Visa too had recently announced setting up an innovation centre in Nairobi.
According to reports, this marks Alphabet’s second-biggest investment in the continent after the AI and research centre in Ghana.