Intel’s Sven Beckmann talking to developers and bloggers at the Ihub
Bloggers, developers and other IT stakeholders had the opportunity to interact with Sven Beckmann,Intel’s General Manager for South Sub-Saharan Africa, yesterday at the Ihub. There was also the opportunity for one lucky winner to win an Acer tablet courtesy of Intel East Africa.
Sven Beckmann was here to shed light on Intel’s activities in Kenya and it’s vision for Africa and itself as a tech company. Africa is slowly rising and taking it’s place as an economical and technology hub with lot’s of potential for growth. Kenya is one of the leading countries in internet usage ranking as high as number 4, higher than South Africa! Intel has set up offices in Kenya with 90 percent of the staff being locals and began various initiatives in the country. Little known fact was that Intel initiated the Wezesha initiative together with the World Bank that was able to give discounts for laptops to over 15000 university students in Kenya.
Despite Africa not having capacity for manufacturing and production, comparable to the likes of China, it does have a big potential in innovation and Intel has set up a partnership with Ihub to assist tap into this. They have also set up initiatives with local universities and held Masters classes that have proved to be really successful.
Intel is working to get developers to register to the Intel developer Zone that has all the tools needed to develop Android and Windows apps optimized for Intel Processor Powered devices.
Sven highlighted that the problem when seeking solutions, even for Small Medium Enterprises, was not in the hardware but in getting innovative software to solve various problems. The key is to get software that can add value.
Lastly he advised developers to set themselves ready for the evolution of connecting devices as the PC was not dead but evolving. As a developer you want to take a neutral position so as to allow yourself room to adapt and that’s what Intel is doing as a company.