Google Opens Product Development Centre in Nairobi

Google has opened the first ever product development centre in Africa, based in Nairobi, as it seeks to build products and services for the African market and the whole world in general.

The firm says it will hire over 100 people including software engineers, researchers and designers over the next two years.

The centre will help solve the difficult technical challenges and improve smartphone experience for people in Africa and build a more reliable internet infrastructure.

“Africa has been at the forefront of innovation and we believe that we are going to continue to develop and innovate right here from the continent,” said Charles Murito, Google’s policy lead for Sub-Saharan Africa.

The centre is Google’s second largest research and development investment in Africa, after the AI research centre in Ghana.

Google has joined the list of tech giants that have set up innovation hubs in Nairobi. Few weeks ago, Microsoft launched a research and development centre in Nairobi. Shortly after, Visa announced that it had set up its first innovation centre to co-create payment and commerce solutions with partners.

Amazon Web Services, also recently announced plans to launch an AWS local zone in Kenya, to join 16 other existing local zones in the US.