Teju Ajani Joins Apple As Managing Director For Nigeria

Teju Ajani has been announced by Apple as the new country manager on Wednesday. The tech giant has announced that she will in particular supervise sales and business development, directly.

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It appears Apple is finally looking to take its business in sub-Saharan Africa seriously, given this new move. It is not clear just where and how far Apple is willing to take it with its operations and hires in Africa. Tech next puts it thus,

“Ajani’s appointment clearly indicates that Apple is looking to improve its market presence in Nigeria, and Africa at large. A study conducted by Apple in eight selected countries revealed that only 6.4% of Nigerians use the iPhone, a far cry from 85.4% using Android mobiles”.

Teju Ajani is joining Apple after two decades in the tech value chain. She has held senior roles at VMware, BEA Systems and Oracle. Before that, she was a developer at Vovida Networks. Most recently, she operated as business development/content lead at YouTube and Google before she became country manager alongside execs.

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That role she held for three years until she was tapped up by Apple for her latest appointment. Ms Ajani is an alumnus of the University of Ilorin with an economics degree, Golden State University, California with a masters in software engineering. It appears Apple is now catching up to improve its market presence in Africa in the way that Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle and Google have managed to in the past decade. In many ways, Africa is the new frontier for tech companies that have achieved exponential growth in such a short time and are looking to scale in new and less developed markets. In many ways, the work to be done in sub-Saharan Africa is plenty and there will never be too much help in that sense. Facebook has committed to not just talent development but internet penetration. Oracle, Google and Microsoft are also invested in talent generation to different extents. Netflix is investing in movies as well as tech talent too. Apple always cut the aloof figure with respect to emerging markets like Africa even though its brand is highly regarded here but that seems to be changing with the latest development. Featured Image Source: Legit9ja

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This article was first published on 11th March 2021

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