How to build Salesforce capacity in Nairobi, Kenya

Yesterday evening, 7 April 2021, I had the opportunity to speak for the Salesforce User Group in Nairobi, it was November 2019, when my African colleagues and I met with Sebastian Czaszar from Taroworks, pre-corona time. We met in a Java House. There and then the idea was born to jointly initiate the Salesforce Saturday in Nairobi. And nowadays, under the leadership of Abdi Kadir, the Salesforce User Group in Nairobi has 90 members!

It was more than a year ago since I last met with my friends and colleagues in Nairobi, due to corona. I am so happy to have taken the risk to come over and encourage my Africolt colleagues, have joint workshops to further build our consulting firm and visit customers and help build the network.

Virtual meetings

Alas, the user group in Nairobi, only had the pleasure of just physical meeting, and then the corona pandemic hit. All meetings were virtual since then. But even with this handicap, the user group managed to grow. And now I had the opportunity to speak, which made me very glad!

Who is this Muzungu?

Last week I had the opportunity to meet one of my new friends at home, she invited me and my colleague for tea and lunch in her house, 7 floors high, they needed to carry their own water via the staircases. Her parents both run a small shop to be able to pay the rent and the costs to have their daughter study at the university. It was such a warm welcome in their lovely peaceful house and such a great experience to meet with her and her caring parents. Walking through the narrow streets with these colorful African shops, the children stared at me: ‘Muzungu, muzungu! Hello! How are you?’. I asked how often a white person visited this neighborhood. “I remember only once”, my friend replied. “That was when I brought an albino with me, everybody stared at us, just like now.’ She is 23, born and raised there…

That made me realize that I am still an outsider, although I feel very much at home in Nairobi. So I started my presentation with: ‘Who is this Muzungu?’.

There were 33 attendees joining our Google Meet event. I could share my experience and insights of working with Salesforce for more than 12 years now. How I ‘fell in love with Salesforce’ and why Eric Mwangi and I started Africolt.

Collaborate

Africolt is not the only Salesforce consulting firm active in Nairobi. We made a call to action to collaborate, of course, we are competitors, but we can collaborate as well in building capacity in Nairobi, sharing lessons learned and best practices. We all are very dedicated to making many organizations successful in adopting the Salesforce platform to strengthen their businesses!

7 July 2021

We declared to organise an event next quarter. Physical, virtual, or hybrid, depending on the corona measurements. Dreaming about having a Dreamforce in Nairobi one day. To make the next step towards that we declared to save the date of 7-7-21, a ‘Digital Transformation Event’ in Nairobi, Kenya!