You say it takes political will, but this isn’t a political decision by African companies. The first three bullet points tell you what’s going on pretty well: A

You say it takes political will, but this isn’t a political decision by African companies. The first three bullet points tell you what’s going on pretty well: African companies are choosing to use a more affordable competitor that they can use local currencies to pay for even though the product isn’t quite as good (per the article, I have no horse in this race myself) and doesn’t have the same level of developer community support. It’s an affordability tradeoff, which is valid, but fundamentally it didn’t take any crap like the political will to do it, just buying decisions at the corporate level. And if you dig down, all you’re really getting is that Google and Microsoft are the established players but Zoho is making a nice business for itself at their expense with African startups.