Google: Mobile is key to their efforts in Africa

Posted by John Moore on February 11, 2011

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Google’s sub-saharan Africa office lead Joe Mucheru recently took time to do an interview about Google’s approach in the 48 countries he is responsible for working in. Mobile is definitely a key focus area in the region as smart phone pricing is decreasing and mobile coverage is increasing rapidly. World-wide we are seeing mobile web browsing approach 4% of all browsing (up from 0.7% in May of 2009) and in Africa mobile web browsing is up 365% in across ten major African countries in just the last year.

The approach being used by Google includes:

Working closely with the next generation of leaders in the universities. Google days and other projects are making Google a key partner in the university system.
Hiring, hiring, hiring. They have dozens of job openings in Africa.
Refining their applications to perform better on mobile devices by loading faster (or at least appearing too) and refining functionality.
Localizing applications in Swahili and other local languages.

Check out the full video (12:04 in length):

John Moore

Founder and CEO of The Lab. An open government strategist, consultant, and analyst. Part writer, speaker, and educator. Other interests? Mobile and CRM.

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