Kenneth Oyolla, who up to last December was Nokia's General Manager for East and Southern Africa is now the new Global Head of Market Activation. The news was broken a fortnight ago by Larry Madowo on his blog. Oyolla's career at Nokia spans from 2007 where he took up the position of Head of Channel and Retail Management, joining the firm from Unilever where he held an equivalent position. He was later to be appointed Head of Sales for Eastern and Southern Africa at Nokia before taking up the position of General Manager.
The move to the global office came about as Nokia repositioned itself globally, moving its Nairobi regional office at the end of 2011 to its South Africa office, which is now in charge of the whole of Africa. Oyolla resigned from his position then, but it appears that his skills were in demand, with unconfirmed reports indicating that one other mobile device vendor had offered him a similar role.

At the same time, Nokia CEO , Stephen Elop will be visiting Kenya this week. While CIO East Africa is yet to find out the agenda of Elop's visit, his schedule involves a round table with developers at the iHub on Thursday. Elop will also be meeting journalists, where he will be expected to brief them on the Nokia's Africa strategy including innovation and driving of local content.

Nokia has the largest market share of devices in the region, though it has recently been facing stiff competition from an aggressive Samsung while affordable smartphones from Chinese firms like Huawei have taken a hit at the firms mid - level devices. Globally , statistics from IDC indicate that Nokia shipped 417.1 million units down from 453.0 in 2010 while Samsung shipped 329.4 million units up from 280.2 million. In the same period, Nokia's market share dropped to 27.0 per cent from 32.6 per cent while Samsung was up to 21.3 per cent from 20.1 per cent.