BGH and its Brazilian partner Positivo opened computer and tablet factories in those African countries. And they specialized in digital classrooms and content. Their African credentials helped them win a contract in Uruguay.

It could be said that it is a pioneering experience, at least for Argentine technology firms. It all started in 2014, when BGH, in a partnership with the Brazilian company Positivo, landed a factory in Rwanda. They sent managers and hired executives there who know first-hand what is happening on that continent, with abandoned towns, thousands of people displaced from their homes and punished by wars. Currently, 95% of the staff is local.

In 2018 they invested another US$5 million to produce computers and tablets and install comprehensive digital classrooms in both Kenya and Rwanda. The novelty is that they are expanding their productive capacity. And they have just landed in Ghana with a contract to produce and distribute computers, according to BGH CEO Marcelo Girotti, told Clarín. In these cases, the client is the government of the country that has financing and supervision from multilateral credit organizations.

Arriving in Rwanda, in central Africa, is synonymous with difficulties, in a country that still exhibits what the tribal genocide meant in 1994 in which more than a million people died. There, the company has a 2,800 square meter factory, with a production capacity of one million units per year. The main client is the government of Rwanda. The second, the corporate market.

In Kenya they won a project to connect children with schools. Kenya is the fifth largest economy in Africa. They provide hardware for laptops and tablets, install digital classrooms and train teachers. They say that in eight months they have smart classes ready in primary schools that include training for teachers. And they are thinking about expanding to smart electricity meters. They developed locators, facial recognition on tablets and a special program for census takers.

Ghana has identical plans for the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa.

As for Positivo, the Brazilian partners of BGH, it is a firm that was born from the initiative of a group of entrepreneurs in 1989, they are experts in educational content who later dedicated themselves to the manufacturing of computers. They partnered in 2011.

By the way, the African experience gave them credentials to debut in Uruguay with the ambitious Ceibal educational program.

BGH, the acronym that summarizes the name of the founder Boris Garfunkel Jr., started in 1913 as a family business wholesaler of hardware products. The company belongs to the Teubal and Hojman families. In 2006, the company landed in the technology business. And its latest foray is the LED lighting market, where it specialized in products for public, industrial, commercial and residential lighting. Between their different divisions they have 1,500 employees, two plants in Tierra del Fuego and a distribution center in the province of Buenos Aires. They operate in 9 countries.

Girotti defines BGH as a technological group. And Africa has grown so much, partly due to the crisis in sales in Argentina, which already represents 50% of its income. Girotti also highlights the export of services so that companies can migrate to the cloud, a division that is growing at high speed with increasing exports, no less than to the US, which invented the cloud.

The CEO assures that the home division, which includes household appliances, is the most difficult to project. Even so, they incorporated 300 people as temporary workers in Río Grande and resurrected an unoccupied plant that was a cooperative in that city of Tierra del Fuego. They no longer resort to ATPs and believe that they will end the year with a turnover of 500 million dollars.

Silvia Naishtat – Clarin.com