Bolt has opened its Africa head office in Nairobi joining a number of tech companies that have chosen Kenya as their regional hub. Microsoft opened the ADC offices earlier this year and Google is planning to do a similar thing in the country too.
According to the Business Daily, Bolt head offices will be in Riverside Drive and will host top managers overseeing operations in the region. The ride hailing service currently operates in seven African countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Tunisia.
“Its strategic location in the region and the available infrastructure has enabled us to grow tremendously in the East African Market and we believe we can leverage this to still achieve more across the entire continent,” Bolt regional director Paddy Partridge said.
Before this, the company did not have a centralized African office and that will change with the opening of the Kenyan hub. It should help it manage operations in Africa and also expand to other regions. “This is just the beginning, and we hope it enables us to develop a cohesive model for sustainable cities engagement that will help improve city services, and urban transportation for the millions of people in the region,” Mr Partridge said.
This hub should be good news for Kenya but my hope is that they end up hiring some local engineers to help develop its products with the local market in mind.
Read: Catherine Muraga appointed the Managing Director of Microsoft ADC replacing Jack Ngare