February 7, 2011 – Though IBM has only been in East Africa for 52 years, which is 50 years later than they first office in the United States.
IBM East Africa joined centenary celebrations, following the company’s founding on June 16, 1911.
They have pledged to take part in a year-long initiative, where they will engage local communities and thought leaders with a series of activities themed around changing the way the world works.
Says Anthony Mwai, Country General Manager, IBM East Africa: “To mark our history in the region and to show our commitment to the future expansion of our business, we will celebrate IBM’s Centennial in East Africa with a number of activities including an IBM lecture series, roundtable meetings and a day of service for the community in June when our employees will have the opportunity to apply their business skills and work experiences to address local critical community challenges and societal needs.”
Mwai’s sentiments echoed those of IBM’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Samuel J. Palmisano; “over the course of the last century, information technology has gone from a set of tools… to an industry… to a science… to a pervasive aspect of the modern world.”
IBM started off making clocks, scales and cheese slicers, in addition to the punched-card tabulator then went on to manufacture typewriters, vacuum tube calculators, magnetic tape, the first disk drive, the memory chip, FORTRAN, fractals, ATMs, mainframes, mini-computers and personal computers.
More recently IBM has become known for its leadership in the area of supercomputers, services, software and business analytics.
“IBM’s inventions,” added Mwai “illustrate how IBM has consistently adapted to remain relevant to the changing needs of the modern world while touching the lives of many worldwide.”
These achievements, alongside numerous Nobel prizes for IBM researchers, IBM’s leading position in the number of patents generated per year (over 5000 in 2010 alone) and a host of other achievements make IBM one of the most respected companies globally.
IBM has 400,000 employees working in over 170 countries.