Nigeria's Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) has expanded to Uganda, the beginning of a continental push expected to put it in 10 African countries by 2015. CWG, one of Africa's leading ICT companies, will use Uganda as a base for its East African operations. CWG grossed revenue in excess of US$120 million last year. The launch of CWG Uganda brings the number of its operations to three; the others being Nigeria and Ghana. The company is looking at Angola as its next stop. "We are a pan-African company with an interest in spanning the continent with innovative solutions in ICT hardware and infrastructure, communications and networking, and software applications and development," said CWG Group Founder and Chief Executive Officer Austin Okere, in Kampala this week to announce the new unit.

"For a long time, Africans have sat back as foreigners have come to do business in Africa, but the time has come for Africans to take the initiative," Okere said.
Okere said CWG is looking at the financial sector, telecommunications and the growing oil and gas sectors in Uganda. In Nigeria, CWG provides 21 banks with telecommunication services and 11 banks use its core banking system. Okere said CWG wants to give businesses whose core business is not computing or IT options for managing their infrastructure.
"What we are saying is you can save costs by giving your disaster recovery to someone who can manage it instead of running 24 disaster recovery sites," Okere said.
He said the major oil players all need high-end IT systems, which CWG is ready to offer. "Even at this stage of Uganda's oil development, those companies exploring for oil need IT systems," he said.
To do that, Okere said CWG Uganda will build the infrastructure required to serve those diverse areas of the company's focus. He said a young sector like oil and gas requires a lot of IT infrastructure behind it.
He said the company has so far invested some $10 million to set up the Uganda operation. He said the company has a lot of investors and banks willing invest and lend in its African push including Intel Capital, which is waiting with $25 million ready to invest in CWG.
Okere said CWG work closely with Infosys of India and one of the new computing areas they are looking at is how cloud computing can be actualized in Africa.
"For now we are looking at how we can achieve IT as a service, but cloud computing is a new area we are looking at," he said.