Global tech firms have pitched camp in Nairobi in what is seen as an attempt to tap into blossoming mobile and web applications talent, writes Jevans Nyabiage

Nairobi last week hosted Nokia President and chief executive Stephen Elop in a meet-up with software developers.

Nokia President and chief executive Stephen Elop. According to the Nokia boss, Kenya has a huge pool of talented mobile and web software developers that the company can tap into. Photo: Courtesy

The Nokia executive’s tour came as its key competitor, South Korean electronics firm, Samsung unveiled an engineering academy in Nairobi that gives it a head-start to tap into the pool of rising crop of young Kenyans with interest in technology.

To rival Samsung, Elop announced that Nokia will transform its Nairobi-based research and development (R&D) centre to become a hub to serve Africa, parts of Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, in what marks Kenya as a regional ICT hub.

According to the Nokia boss, Kenya has a huge pool of talented mobile and web software developers that the company can tap into.

“Kenya is focal to our growth. This is why we have Nokia R&D centre which is the only such facility in Africa,” he said.

“There is a reason I am here and not in the other 57 countries in Africa,” Elop said when he met with over 50 developers at iHub — innovations centre that houses more than 3,000 software developers. “I am only visiting Kenya and South Africa.”

Nokia is keen on mobile applications tailored to education, health and e-commerce sectors. The firm is eyeing emerging markets at a time when they are witnessing falling handset sales.

The firm is facing stiff competition in the handset market with firms such as Samsung, Apple and ZTE gaining market share.

In the past three years, Nokia has shed more than 3,000 jobs and moved production to Asia from Europe to cut costs.

The Finnish giant last year downgraded Kenya office from a regional hub to a sales and marketing office under South Africa — in its efforts to cut costs.

Market share

A report released by Gartner in November indicates that Nokia’s global market share dropped to 22.8 in August from 30.3 per cent same period last year, with its overall pieces sold over the period dropping to 97,869.6 from 111,473 in 2010.

Nokia was forced to choose Nokia’s Windows OS, as strong competition from firms that have adopted Google’s Android operating system was evident, and the future of its Symbian OS was threatened.

In the past few years, Kenya’s ingenuity in web and mobile apps development has received global limelight.

On his first at Nokia from Microsoft, Elop presented an award to the best application developed by Mr John Waibochi’s Virtual City, a Kenyan a software company, founded in 2000.

Virtual City beat 54 other products from around the world to win the challenge as an indicator of wider developments in the country’s software industry.

Although official figures from the ICT Board indicate that the country makes just over Sh700 million from software development on an annual basis, the figure is said to represent just a fraction of what several Kenyan firms make from the sector.

Elop announced that Nokia will increase its investment in Kenya and the East African region by 25 per cent. The investments will be in Nokia R&D centre in Nairobi, which is one of its kind in Africa and the Indian sub-continent.

Other investments will be in helping local developers to build Nokia apps, and in expanding its marketing.

“We have made a conscious decision to make Kenya one of our worldwide hubs for innovators from where we can serve Africa and parts of Middle East. That’s why I’m visiting here over the last couple of days,” he said.

Probably, attracted by homegrown technology success stories from Kenya, such as M-Pesa, the mobile money transfer service, and Ushahidi, the crisis mapping software, firms are banking to move into the future by tapping into the bustling web and mobile applications scene.

Mobile solutions

Analysts say that the country is carving a niche for itself in designing unique mobile solutions such as the one for which Virtual City was honoured.

This is attributed to the relatively high uptake of mobile services in the country and the availability of a rising number of young university graduates specialising in technology-related fields.

In the last five years, international firms such as Google, Facebook, Nokia and Blackberry have combed Kenyan universities searching for developers able to create unique solutions for mobile phones or the Internet.

The firms host annual conferences where they ask students to create solutions for world problems, offering them the opportunity to be absorbed into the companies or to interact with global thought leaders on future trends.

This month, Samsung launched an engineering academy in Nairobi. This is the second, after the first one in South Africa and plans to train over 10,000 engineers by 2015 to support various customers in the region.

The engineering academy situated at Woodvale Centre Westlands, Nairobi will train engineers that will help push innovation in Kenya and offer service support of a wide range of Samsung products.

A total of 120 students, selected from Samsung E-learning Centres located at PC Kinyanjui and Kabete Technical, will attend the Samsung Electronics Engineering Academy and receive hands-on, practical skills training at no cost, enabling them to move into well-paying jobs after they graduate.

Samsung will also assist students in kick-starting their careers by giving them the opportunity to intern and thereafter work and serve as independent service technicians or employees in their retail channel outlets in the region.

“We envision a future where products are designed by engineers in Africa, manufactured in Africa and tailored to meet the needs of consumers in Africa,” Samsung Business Leader, Robert Ngeru said during the launch.

In the past few years, a string of initiatives have been launched, aiming to position Kenya as a global software hub, hoping to tackle industry challenges such as how to get financing for ideas and creating links between companies and individual developers.

Kenya, through the Kenya ICT Board has been funding innovators through initiatives such as Tandaa.

Early this month, Abel Masai Jevayi from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), with his KaroPay App emerged the winner of the Huawei Android Application Challenge.

This is the first inter–university competition organised by Huawei Technologies in collaboration with Safaricom and three public universities — Moi University, University of Nairobi and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

The Android Application Challenge is aimed at preparing the future technology leaders by transferring industry technical knowledge to universities, which hub young innovative minds.

“Kenya is as an innovation capital in the Sub Saharan Africa. Through such initiatives, we hope to tap and promote localised content in universities and spur growth in global markets,” said Li Dafeng, President of Huawei East and South Africa region.

Source The Standard

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