For IBM, Africa Is Risky and Rife With Opportunity

Tony Mwai moved back to his homeland of Kenya in 2009 to run IBM’s East Africa operations, about 20 years after joining the company in New York. The country was still recovering from a political crisis that erupted following the disputed election of President Mwai Kibaki, leaving thousands dead or homeless. The IBM executive encountered a Kenya unrecognizable from his childhood, a growing economy with great potential but also constrained by every infrastructure challenge imaginable. Some Kenyan government departments still used paper to store data, and traffic jams were epic.

For IBM and its new chief executive officer, Virginia “Ginni” Rometty, the problems of Kenya and elsewhere in Africa add up to a tantalizing opportunity. As IBM’s ubiquitous Smarter Planet ads never tire of mentioning, the company has consulting expertise in hardware, software, and data management systems it claims can improve agricultural productivity, government efficiency, and the performance of power grids and transportation networks. Much of Africa needs help in all of the above.