Digital Divide Data Kenya is a unique business process outsourcing company with a two prong agenda: to make profit but also to elevate the Kenyan youth out of poverty.

Amolo Ng’weno, has built the company in Kenya that is becoming a much talked about entity.

ITWeb Africa caught up with the Ng’weno, who is the managing director of Digital Divide Kenya, to find out more about the organisation’s future plans.

VINCENT MATINDE: When did Digital Divide Data start here in Kenya?

AMOLO NG’WENO: Digital Divide Data started in March 2011, so we have been here for two and a half years.

VINCENT MATINDE: What is your education background?

AMOLO NG’WENO: I grew up in Nairobi. I went to Harvard for my undergraduate. I did a Masters in Economics and Public Policy in Princeton University. Then I worked at the World Bank for four years in Washington D.C and then came back and became the co-founder of Africa Online. Then I went back to the U.S to work for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and that’s where I met the people who were founders of DDD and they interested me to coming back to Kenya and set up DDD here in Kenya.

VINCENT MATINDE: So why did the founders choose to set up shop in Kenya?

AMOLO NG’WENO: The founders were already talking to Rockefeller Foundation and they (Rockefeller) were interested in Africa generally. For Kenya particularly it was because there was high unemployment, there was a nascent BPO sector and the unemployed people are nonetheless suitable to work in that industry.

VINCENT MATINDE: What is the core business of the company?

AMOLO NG’WENO: We are business process outsourcing company, but we also have a social mission. So we do business process work for companies both in Kenya and around the world. For example we do data entry for Ancestry.com, a genealogy company.

We also do web based research for companies. For example, companies want to know if their products are being reproduced anywhere in the world. So we go online and do research and make reports for such companies.

Also we do social science research and market research, which include telephone polls and face to face interviews.

We also do e-books conversions, so if you have paper books we can change them to electronic formats.

VINCENT MATINDE: How big is the company?

AMOLO NG’WENO: We have around 350 employees in Kenya and over 1,000 worldwide. We are a for profit company in Kenya but we are majority owned by a US non governmental organisation which is also operating for profit companies in Cambodia and Lao and has been doing so for 12 years.

VINCENT MATINDE: So how do you work with youth from disadvantaged backgrounds?

AMOLO NG’WENO: We are a social enterprise which means we are combining the profit motive with a social mission. Our social mission is that the people who do the work are hired from disadvantaged backgrounds mostly from urban slums but we also have a group of hearing impaired operators.

They work with us typically for four or five years and we support their higher education. And then when they are done with their education we expect that they are going to graduate from the institution but also from the company and move on to careers in formal IT based employment and entrepreneurship.

VINCENT MATINDE: So they are trained while working at Digital Divide Data?

AMOLO NG’WENO: Because of the commitment to their education, they have to be our long term employee. We cannot say that “here is a short term job and I am going to pay your fee for the first semester and then goodbye”. So it is kind of a long term commitment on both sides. And they need to be trained to do the particular assignment.

The core training is really in typing, whether you are just entering names or doing complex reports or whether you are writing software, if you know how to type you are going to do that work better and faster.

VINCENT MATINDE: How is funding from Rockefeller Foundation boosting the company?

AMOLO NG’WENO: It has been great. They gave us grant for our initial startup investment. That is money well spent and we have successfully taken off the ground. They have also been great partners in terms of supporting the sector, so its not just us as their grantees but they have done a lot to support the BPO sector in Kenya, through the development of digital jobs in Kenya which you may know its one of their major initiatives. They have been a fantastic partner.

VINCENT MATINDE: What is the outlook of the skills you are developing in DDD for the African market? Will BPO be a saturated sector soon?

AMOLO NG’WENO: I am very optimistic. I don’t think BPO will be saturated. I don’t think the internationalisation and computerisation of work is going to decline, if anything it is just going to expand. But I will say we are very fortunate in Kenya in that we have a pretty good education system. So even when we hire people from disadvantaged backgrounds their English is good, their problem solving skills are good; job skills, ability to focus, to be on time and to organize their life is good and I am not sure that is as true in many other African countries.

For this sector we are fortunate because we have a large number of unemployed people who are nonetheless well educated people. So in terms of Kenya as a BPO destination it is very favorable. In terms of the promise in Kenya, I am very optimistic.

VINCENT MATINDE: What do you feel about the “Silicon Savannah”?

AMOLO NG’WENO: I think its early days although I am very optimistic about Silicon Savannah. From where I am sitting (Nairobi) there are 12 universities in a two hundred metre distance and I think when you compress the energy of the youth who are also “digital natives”. You combine that with brain power in universities and the investor interest, both local and international, I am optimistic.

We are a small country. When we get visits from the Indian BPO Industry they tell us we are the size of greater New Delhi. I am not expecting we will do things like be the next Microsoft or Oracle. We still need huge numbers of engineering power for instance. The country may not be able to support that currently.

Nine out of ten all new businesses go out of business, so it is not going to be different in the tech sector and it was not different in Silicon Valley. Right now there is a lot of seed capital available as compared to the past.

To turn an idea into a business requires a whole new set of skills that I think we maybe haven’t really taken seriously. There is need to learn marketing, proper finance, business planning and all the things that allow you to succeed in any business.

VINCENT MATINDE: What are some of the successes of the company?

AMOLO NG’WENO: The main success is basically business growth, that we are able to employ more than 300 people. We have successfully done a number of work especially for Parastatals: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Kenya National Library, Pumwani Hospital, City of Kisumu.

VINCENT MATINDE: How is government embracing IT in its operations?

AMOLO NG’WENO: I think there is a true intention by this government and the last one to embrace ICT, at the top policy level. But I think it has really been much slower than intended for many typical government reasons. There people who don’t want it to go forward because they think they will lose their jobs or their way of making money.

The tender process is also not transparent. The tenders will be issued and we will bid but no tender will be awarded.

VINCENT MATINDE: What are the opportunities and dangers for this sector?

AMOLO NG’WENO: I do think there are lots of opportunities. The main difficulty in this sector is meeting client’s quality and timeliness requirements. This applies locally and internationally. The local companies are demanding on quality and the international clients are demanding on time. Maintaining quality standards while being under pressure on time is difficult.

VINCENT MATINDE: Tell us about your e-book initiatives.

AMOLO NG’WENO: Our Asian offices have been doing e-book conversion for the US market for a long time. When we started in the Kenyan market, the first corporate presentation was to the Kenyan publishers. They said they know that it is coming but they can’t sell the books in this format and we want to sell first and foremost to the Kenyan readers and there is no platform to sell the books.

So we created a sister company called eKitabu which is one year old now, which is a distribution platform for e-books where you can buy both international and local titles online, and you can pay with MPesa and credit cards although it is not popular.

We have about 500 local books that have been converted which are more school books because of the laptops for every child programme. We have seen big interest.

VINCENT MATINDE: Any plans for DDD to move to other countries?

AMOLO NG’WENO: I would not say we have specific plan but certainly we are continuing to explore activities both in the immediate East African region and also in West Africa. They are not really plans but thoughts.