Hi Google,

I am a mobile app developer based in Zimbabwe and a big challenge that I and many other developers in Africa face is that we can't create a merchant account necessary to submit paid apps nor in-app purchases on Google Play, the largest app store for Android apps. Whereas you allow end users from pretty much most countries in Africa to purchase apps on Google Play you only permit developers in just 2 African countries, i.e Egypt & Nigeria, to sell apps.

This entails that the only monetisation option left for the rest of us on Google Play is free apps with adverts which is very limiting both for myself and yourselves as less revenue is generated.

The other option of publishing on alternate apps stores like Amazon Appstore has a huge drawbacks as users get 2 severe warnings against downloading from sources other than Google Play. Many users stop proceeding with a download when they get warnings like "This type of file can harm your device. Do you want to keep Amazon_App.apk anyway?". I have thus seen much lower conversion rates on acquiring users on alternate stores because of issues like this.

My sincere request is that you will make a new year's resolution for 2016 to allow we the Android app developers in Zimbabwe and other African countries to be able to sell our apps and in-app products on Google Play to the benefit of both your business and our own businesses.