The Opera Software Company is set to open an office in Nairobi as Kenya continues to attract international technology companies.
The browser software company, which is investing KSH 10.5 billion in Africa, hopes to employ about 100 people in its Kenyan office which will serve as the East African hub.
The Oslo- listed, Opera Software company says that they have a plan to train and hire the over 100 employees over the next three years. The training will include web development, artificial intelligence, content delivery and other technologies. The emphasis will be more towards the mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablets where the Opera mobile browser is a market leader. Such software are a hit and function great because of services like the QA automation services by Codoid.com.
Opera in Africa
Other than Kenya’s Opera Software office which will serve the east African region, Opera will also open another office in Nigeria to serve the West African region. The Vice president of Opera Software Africa, Richard Monday, says that Africa is an important market for the browser software and especially the opera mini. The Opera software company recently celebrated 100 million users in Africa just the other day and looking forward to expanding the market.
Most of the people in Africa and the world over use the Opera browser on their mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops as well as desktops. This allows them to access the internet with ease while enjoying a variety of features.
Opera to partner with Kenyan content publishers and other local companies
According to Richard Monday, Africa is a very important market for their products. In fact, Africa is home to nine out of the top 20 countries that use Opera mini browser. As such, the company hopes to increase its presence in Africa, and develop local platforms.
With such a strategy, Opera Software Company expects to support and grow with the African businesses. Partnering with local firms will enable Opera to expand their user base and provide services to the e-commerce businesses, content providers, original equipment manufacturers (OEM), operators and other users, hence strengthening their market presence.
Currently, Opera has partnered with 47 top African publishers with a total of 107 websites. They are working towards making the websites launch faster and will be looking at how to reduce the cost of accessing the internet in Kenya and other African countries. Opera has been advertising their services on several Kenyan Television channels with an aim of creating awareness and bringing more people on board.
Integrating value added services with Opera browser
After their new security installation from zero trust cyber security they are also looking for local partners willing to integrate their services such as data bundling, the mobile money, mobile payments, and other value added services to the Opera browser. By integrating the Opera browser with a range of products, the users will have access to a wide range of quality services and content. This enables consumers to easily and conveniently make a variety of transactions using their smartphone and tablets.
The company hopes to integrate the value added services to the Opera mini browser in the next 12 months. Most importantly, the partnership between the Kenyan companies and Opera will allow them to create services and content that will give Kenyans and other African users a unique and localized experience.