Article from This Is Africa. "The Digital Generation"

Google’s Nairobi office has none of the famous beanbags “but we have an exercise ball,” says Joe Mucheru, “and a Nintendo Wii.”

Mr Mucheru, head of Google East Africa, is spearheading the company’s drive into Africa’s growing software markets. Google is one of the world’s most recognised brands, synonymous with the bleeding edge of the internet economy. Its market capitalisation stands at more than $100bn and its sprawling headquarters in Palo Alto, California, has been both lauded and derided for its unconventional working practices.

Regardless of – or perhaps due to – its peculiarities, Google has continually proven itself devastatingly effective at both anticipating and shaping future trends in the internet economy. However, it seems strange that it sees the future here, in a small but airy office overlooking Nairobi’s well-heeled commercial district of Westlands.

There are still, Mr Mucheru concedes, those within Google who do not yet understand exactly what his operation does. Dubbed a “deployment office”, it combines a mixture of functions, from development and sales to some that are less well defined. This, he says, is a necessity, given the current state of the marketplace. “Traditionally, Google has either opened a sales office, so a place where the primary objective is dollars, or an engineering office, where the primary objective is engineering. You’ve had that happen all throughout the world,” he says.

East Africa is not yet well connected. In fact, much of the continent lacks penetration of fibreoptic cables, keeping the availability of access low and the cost to the consumer high. For Google, which essentially thrives as a gateway to content and makes its revenues through targeted advertisements placed alongside search results, access is vital. Even so, Google sees in the continent’s huge population of under-25s an enormous opportunity. Like many others, he points to the rapid uptake of mobile phones and associated applications as an indicator of consumer demand for technology.

“If you look at the mobile [industry], and how it has grown, it grew like that,” Mr Mucheru says, snapping his fingers. “The take-up is very fast. Technology comes in waves, and if you’re not prepared – if you’re not ready at the beginning of the wave – then you’ll have a big task to climb to the top, if you want to ride it.

“So that, combined with the mission of the company – which is to organise all of the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful – it makes sense to have an office in sub-Saharan Africa, but you can’t then have an office that looks at revenues. You can’t then have an office that’s looking at engineering talent. Not because there’s no talent, but we don’t have an abundance of either,” he explains. In true Californian style, Google Kenya is waiting for a wave. It is a wave that has been building in developed markets for the past few years, changing the economics of technology and having broadly felt – if sometimes shallow – social effects.