Looking at the huge potential the continent offers, the company is all set to strike gold in Africa, by cherry picking the three of the biggest IT distributors in Africa. Tie-up with Mitsumi, Despec and Sahara Computers will provide an excellent platform to take the competition head on and allow it to capture bigger pie of the market.
“Africa is a significant growth market for us,” said Sreedhar Sreekumar, SanDisk Regional Sales Manager Middle East and Africa. “Africa is a growing emerging market and it is experiencing rapid economic growth.”
According to SanDisk, Sahara Computers will entirely focus on developing and supplying the large reseller IT channel in the South African market. The distributor will deal with independent retail outlets and resellers.
Commenting on its partnership with SanDisk, Stephan SJD Nel, the executive director of Sahara Computers, said, “Our partnership with SanDisk reinforces our commitment to make consumer technology more readily available to end-users in South Africa,”
SanDisk has partnered with Mitsumi to distribute storage solutions in over 19 countries across Africa like Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, Zambia and Namibia. Mitsumi has a network of its own offices in 12 African countries and a channel base of more than 6,000 technology resellers.
“The relationship with Mitsumi will strengthen our position in the African storage market. We are excited to work with Mitsumi and to see SanDisk grow throughout the continent. Our relationship with Mitsumi reinforces our objective to expand our product reach in Africa.” said Sreedhar.
Expressing his delight over the tie up with SanDisk, Mitesh Shah, managing director at Mitsumi Distribution said, “Mitsumi, with its pan–Africa presence and width of distribution, is excited to work with a dynamic brand like SanDisk, and grow the SanDisk flash memory storage business to its full potential in the captive and emerging markets of Africa.”
Despec is a dedicated specialist office and printer supplies distributor and the partnership with SanDisk is to distribute SanDisk retail products to the SMB channel as well as retail channel is selected countries in East Africa, namely Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
Faisal Jamal, COO at Despec stated, that “The African market is expanding at a staggering rate. Smartphone growth in Africa has increased by 43% every year since 2000. We look forward to working with SanDisk.”
