INTERVIEW: Connectivity limitations, high data costs and battery usage are among the factors developers need to consider when designing for the African market, Google director of Android partnerships for Africa Mahir Sahin (pictured) told Mobile World Live.

Discussing ways to reduce device prices and increase digital inclusion, Sahin said by lowering storage requirements for applications and reducing the necessary data usage, the cost of access could be cut.

Google itself released a reduced capability edition of its operating system in late 2017 aimed at markets with unreliable connectivity and a proliferation of handsets with low storage space.

Sahin said the special version of Android – made available in sub-Saharan Africa in April 2018 – runs on devices with less than 1GB of memory.

“Because the cost of data is so expensive, we built our own services from the ground-up to save data and have offline capabilities integrated. We are doing our bit, but partnership is also important.”

“We work very closely with mobile operators and mobile developers, we preach our programme Build for Billions to have things like connectivity, data capability, battery consumption in mind when they are developing apps and services,” he noted.

For the full interview, where the executive also discusses the company’s initiatives to train 10 million people in Africa with digital skills, click here.