Orientation Global Network, a rapidly growing network of regional and country portals run by Hong Kong’s Black Box Ltd., has launched its eighth country and second African site, Orientation Uganda.
To produce the Uganda site, Orientation has partnered with Swift Global (Uganda) Ltd., an African ISP that offers services in Uganda and Kenya and is Orientation’s partner for its Kenya portal.
Swift will be offering these services in Tanzania during the first quarter of 1999 and will also be involved in the launching and management of Orientation Tanzania in the same period.
“The Internet is a powerful tool that will help shape the future of Uganda
and the whole of East Africa,” said Richard Bell, managing director of Swift
Global (Uganda) Ltd. “The new portal will give the growing Ugandan Internet community their own gateway to the wired world.”
“It’s countries like Uganda that demonstrate the real potential for the
Internet over the next few years,” said Jay Tindall, vice president and
co-founder of Orientation. “What has been a consumer-bred product in the
west is being embraced right from the start as the backbone for the next
stage of development for economies such as Uganda’s. Orientation intends to
contribute to that.”
Orientation’s business plan seems to be to enter developing markets that the big American portals like Yahoo! won’t go to.
Launched in July of last year, Orientation operates 6 regional
portals in Asia, Africa, Central & Eastern Europe, Latin American & the
Caribbean, the Middle East and Oceania.
Among the network’s country portals, Orientation Uganda follows the launch of Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Romania, Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Thailand and Russia since November.
Recently, the global network moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to New York to be in a more strategic location to seek venture capital.