On October 23 and 24, Sochi Resort in Russia hosts a tremendous Russia – Africa Summit and Forum, attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as high representatives of all African countries including Nana Akufo-Addo.
In his opening speech on October 23, Mr. Putin mentioned Yandex, which is the parent company of Yango, for bringing up-to-date intelligent technologies from Russia to Africa.
Musheg Sahakian, Global Expansion Director for Yango was invited to the stage at the Economic part of the event.
He started by sharing the latest updates on Yango’s global expansion and success.
Yango and other services of Yandex.Taxi work in 18 countries, including Ghana and Ivory Coast, with over 700,000 drivers are working with the service actively.
Mr. Sahakian stressed that good earnings for drivers, together with affordable prices and high-quality service for users have are because of the unique Yandex ecosystem of services (Search, Maps, Navigations, Artificial Intelligence, Voice Assistant and 90 others), which distinguishes it from its competitors.
“Russia is going back to Africa with a high-tech product. The quality of our IT solutions is seen in the fact that Russia is the only market where domestic internet services compete successfully with major global players in open competition,” stated Mr. Sahakian.
Also, Mr. Sahakian spoke about Yandex’s self-driving cars which are being tested in several countries and already made 1,000,000 miles of driverless rides.
“To sum things up, I want to just say again that we’re focused on and care about Africa. We see a continent with tremendous potential and a great will to working with Russian companies. Here’s to hoping this forum will help all of us start an even more productive dialogue,” said Mr. Sahakian in concluding his speech.
How safe is Yango?
Yango is one of the ride-hailing companies that automatically tracks speed and driving behavior to monitor how long a driver has been behind the wheel. Because of this, the system automatically flags violators.