Google Meets Kenyan Tech Bloggers, Developers and Students and Announces New Products

Google’s G-Kenya event in Nairobi kicks off yesterday and is expected to last till Wednesday 8th September. It has brought together many local and regional  tech savvy entrepreneurs and developers and students at a web and mobile conference at Strathmore University. It will have hosted more than 1200 engineers, product managers, entrepreneurs, students and web developers discussing the future of web application development, and receive training on Google’s products and online business skills as well as meet and engage with top Google executives.

Google also announced today the Kenyan launch of Android Market . The market is an open distribution channel for mobile applications that allows developers to distribute their applications to users worldwide on a level playing field.The annoucement was made by Nelson Mattos who is Google’s Vice President for product engineering for Europe, Middle east and Africa.

Google’s web and mobile themed conference, named G-Kenya, is to show Google’s commitment to driving the web forward in Africa, and highlighting the entrepreneurial opportunities presented by the internet.   G-Kenya focuses on Google’s developer and business technologies ranging from Android, mobile development and AppEngine to Google Maps for business, website optimization and online advertising.

Attendees have the chance to explore Google’s open source technologies through a combination of tech talks, breakout sessions and codelabs run by engineers and business teams from across the globe.  Key among the speakers are  Nelson Mattos, Engineering Vice President for Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Joe Mucheru, Lead for Sub Saharan Africa, whilst some notable local attendees include top bloggers like Techmtaa.

Nelson Mattos said, “This is a significant event for us in Kenya, which we hope will engage the local tech and business communities, and highlight the opportunities of the web.  Our aim is to make the internet more locally relevant and useful to Kenyans, to enable meaningful product development, and strengthening a vibrant and self-sufficient internet ecosystem in Arica.”