Well, I am sure that most of you know that since June 2007 Google has set foot in Sub-Saharan Africa by choosing Kenya as the base country for their regional office.

Why Kenya ?

They did an audit to choose between South Africa or Kenya and they chose the later because:

1/ Kenya is well developed, not as much as SA, but the ICT revolution has started since the arrival of mobile communication company. Now, in Nairobi, you get 3G, can watch DSTV on your phone, sending money to people in rural area (M-Pesa), etc... It's moving so fast.

2/ Because there is little competition in Kenya and Kenya is still a dream destination. Everybody knows that you better start where competition is low... May be the market is South Africa is already booked. But Kenya is perfect niche for their Adwords/Adsense. In fact, in June 2007, they gave free Adwords account with some credit to major companies in the tourism sector.

3/ Because Kenya has awarded an $82m undersea internet cable project to the French-American company Alcatel-Lucent in Oct. 2007. The cable will go from Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates to Mombasa in Kenya and should be operational in 2009 (although they are already say they will miss the deadline). The aim being to compete with India and to market Kenya as a centre for business outsourcing, as India has done. In fact Google had even launch an East Africa Google Gadget Competition to track best geeks in the region.

A short interview of Joseph Mucheru, Office Lead of Google Kenya

Initially there will be three big things. Firstly, we want to optimize 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.

Anyway, one year after the arrival of Google in Kenya, we can say that Google is really moving forward because the FRESH NEWS, here in Nairobi, are that:

A/ Google Maps Kenya is completed and it really rocks! Go and see Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro and our bumpy roads! Or Nairobi's map with schools, restaurants, shopping plaza, etc.

B/ Google Kenya has just signed a deal with an international marketing company who has a branch based in Nairobi, they want to kick their Adwords/Adsense strategy.

The Internet revolution is just starting here... The Kenyan diasporas has been waiting for this. Now, we just want a new e-law for the country allowing services like Paypal to come in, to protect consumers and to fight cyber-crimes.