South Africa's leading value-added distributor, Networks Unlimited has opened its first cross border office in Nairobi, Kenya, encouraged by the growing demand for its products in East Africa.

"While our offices may be new in Kenya, Networks Unlimited currently operates across 18 other countries in Africa, and nearly 20% of our revenue is generated from sub-Saharan Africa," says Anton Jacobsz, managing director at Networks Unlimited.

Networks Unlimited's footprint now spans five offices, of which four, including its head office, are located in South Africa.

"Our on-the-ground presence in Kenya's capital city provides us with the right footing to steadily expand our business, and better serve and support our East African channel partners and customers," says Jacobsz.

He points out that the company's vision is to grow the Nairobi office into a fully-fledged operation similar to its Johannesburg setup. "We will first focus on providing our security, networking, storage and data centre products, before establishing the technical expertise side of our business," says Jacobsz.

He adds that once the business in East Africa is "running smoothly", the company will investigate expansion into West Africa, Nigeria in particular.

"It is the start of great things to come as we aim within the next five years to have Africa generating the same amount of revenue as Networks Unlimited in South Africa currently does, effectively doubling our turnover," says Jacobsz.