Diageo appoints Waithera Kabiru to lead Africa Digital Hub hosted in Kenya
KENYA – Global alcohol beverage giant, Diageo, has stationed its newly launched Africa Digital Hub at East African Breweries Limited’s headquarters in Garden City Office Park, Nairobi- Kenya.
The hub is a shared service aimed at accelerating Diageo’s digital transformation plans in Africa. With a focus on key markets like Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana, the Africa Digital Hub will play a vital role in deploying digital capabilities rapidly.
In a recent IWSR report, Nigeria and South Africa are among 16 key markets where Total E-commerce sales of beverage alcohol are expected to contribute an additional US$10bn+ to the beverage alcohol market, over the next 5 years to reach nearly US$40bn by 2026.
The Africa Digital Hub, which also seeks to reinforce Kenya’s prime position as a tech leader in Africa, driven by an emerging, wealthier middle-class population, will be headed by Ms. Waithera Kabiru, the immediate former Head of Media Futures at EABL.
“To win the next generation celebration by engaging and delighting consumers with world-class experiences across every consumer’s physical and digital touchpoints,” Diageo’s Global Digital Transformation Lead Susan Jones.
The development comes as Kenya continues to emerge as a favorite innovation destination for global tech giants, thanks to mobile penetration, tech innovation, and an emerging middle-class population.
A recent white paper by Visa indicated that e-commerce across has experienced phenomenal growth rates around the world and grow to $7 trillion across the globe by 2024.
In 2020, EABL launched its direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform (ke.theBar.com) and this will be scaled to other markets in Africa.
thebar.com matches the global Diageo online platform ‘the bar’. The launch follows a successful test in the Kenyan market following Covid-19. It replaced Party Central, the company’s popular platform that helped alcoholic beverage consumers order KBL’s products online.
The upgraded platform connects online consumers to EABL’s products from mainstream distributors, supermarkets, and key retailers, making it the first of a kind of scale in Kenya.
Through the site, customers have access to well-priced, high-quality products directly from the breweries and distilleries where they are produced, personalized activations, special offers, and tiered packages offers suited to their needs. The site is age restricted.
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