Google: Mobile is key to their efforts in Africa

Image via Wikipedia

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):