Russian President, Vladimir Putin has applauded the contribution of Yandex, parent company of ride-hailing service, Yango for bringing up-to-date intelligent technologies from Russia to Africa.

According to him, the contribution of Russian companies especially in the technology sector has helped accelerate Africa’s development.

President Putin made the comment when he opened the first Russia-Africa economic summit in Sochi, on the Black Sea, on Wednesday.

He added that, Russia is determined to expand its presence in Africa by offering systematic development assistance citing a mix of $20-billion debt relief, trade preferences, help in the fight against infectious diseases such as ebola and energy production, mainly nuclear, mining, and educational support, to showcase Russia’s commitment to the continent.

Also, Global Expansion Director for Yango, Mr. Musheg Sahakian who was at the summit shared the success story of Yango in Africa.

 “Yango and other services of Yandex currently work in 18 countries, including Ghana and Ivory Coast. Over 700,000 drivers are working with the service on an active basis. Thanks to our technologies, drivers and partners benefit a lot - only in Russia, during the last two years they earned over $5 billion”.

Mr. Sahakian stressed that good earnings for drivers together with affordable prices and high-quality service for users have been made possible due to 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,” Mr. Sahakian stated.

He spoke about Yandex's self-driving cars which are currently being tested in several countries and already made 1,000,000 miles of driverless rides.

“These are ‘ideal drivers’: they never get tired or need to sleep, they obey rules and self-learn over millions of hours of driving experience” Mr. Sahakian explained.

And while the future is coming, and cars still need drivers, Yango pays great attention to the safety and security of rides.

“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,” Mr. Sahakian added.