It is no longer news that Google has been making its footprints across Africa, starting with South Africa and Kenya and now spreading to all sub-Saharan African countries including Nigeria.

Google has since opened offices and hired people in both South Africa and Kenya and has recently announced for Office Lead roles in Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. This indicates Google’s strong investment interests in Africa, the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration ranging from 30% to 100% from country to country (with Nigeria as the largest telecoms market in Africa).

What It Could Mean for The Economy

Google’s presence will have a positive impact on Nigeria’s economy via the introduction of new products, services and innovations for both companies and consumers. These products and services will drive the Nigerian market towards competition and thereby make for price reductions on specific technology-related solutions. Possible products will include Google Enterprise Search, Google Apps Security, Compliance and a variety of free software services.

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I’ve not been a huge fan of Zain Nigeria (formerly Celtel Nigeria), but I think the mobile company will enjoy my patronage from now:-) Zain Nigeria has just introduced a Super Duper offer that allows people on their network to save up to 63% on international call rates. Geez!

From October to December 2008, all Zain Customers will pay only N12 per minute when they make a call to fixed lines in the U.K, Canada and the U.S during off-peak periods on weekdays and weekends. What a better way to enjoy the holidays?

With the new price offer, Zain now has the most cost effective international call rates among the major operators in Nigeria. Other GSM operators charge N40.00 per minute or about 67 kobo (N0.67) per seconds for international calls to prime locations across the world.

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Naijastew is a new social utility fashioned after the famous Facebook. Like any other social networking site, the site allows you to create a profile, upload photos, write blogs, share music and videos, chat, and much more.

The site has a clean and refreshing design, very professional and non-invasive as far as ads are concern. The design also adopts some of the features of Facebook’s applications and functionality.

Naijastew is currently working on a video application which will be the next upgrade to its beta application. The site which launched about a week now currently has a community of about 40 members just by word of mouth.

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This is a quick post to announced that StartupsNigeria was profiled on TechMASAI, an African blog that monitors and criticizes web 2.0 sites and start-ups with special emphasis on Africa.

The blog has been covering african tech scene and has also reviewed sites and services such as Zoopy, Mpesa, Myvideo, Blueworld amongst others.

We appreciate your support!

It’s been a month since the “1st Nigerian Bloggers’ Conference” was held in Lagos. The event was organised by top Nigerian blogger, Deolu Akinyemi together with other popular bloggers like Gbenga Sesan, Olumide Alabi, Gbenga Aijotan, Anu Oluwadare amongst others.

The announcement was made via Facebook by Deolu, but I doubt if every Nigerian blogger (including me) was aware of this. In fact, I just heard about it today, even though I use Facebook regularly. So in my opinion, even though there are tens of thousands of Nigerians on Facebook, I feel it wasn’t a good medium to advertise a huge event of its kind.

On the positive side, I have read a few of the highlights of the event and I’m impressed that there were good speeches and discussions on the future of the Nigerian blogosphere and how the blogging industry in Nigeria could compete with other established industries. In my opinion, the discussions could have also included:

1. Building a web community for Nigerian bloggers
2. Developing a web 2.0 blog aggregator for Nigeria
3. Launch an annual Nigerian social media/blogging awards

…and more!

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