Microsoft prioritises Africa with new initiative

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United States technology company, Microsoft Corporation says it is focusing on accelerating adoption of smart devices, empowering small and medium businesses, and up-leveling skills development to ignite African innovation for the continent. 

Emmanuel Onyeje, country manager, Microsoft Nigeria, said this while making presentation during the commemoration of the company’s 20 years stewardship in Africa. The company says it is looking forward to the next 20 years, adding that it intends to explore new ways to link the growth of the business with initiatives that spur economic development. The firm introduced the ‘Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative’, which is designed to help improve Africa’s global competitiveness.  As part of the project, according to Onyeje, Microsoft is investing N12 billion in Nigeria.

The goal, according to Microsoft is to empower African youth, entrepreneurs, developers, and business and civic leaders to turn great ideas into a reality that can help their community, their country, the continent, and beyond. According to Onyeje, by 2016, Microsoft projects to help place tens of millions of smart devices in the hands of African youths, bring one million African Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) online, up-skill 100,000 members of the Africa’s existing workforce, and help an additional 100,000 recent graduates develop skills for employability, 75 per cent of which Microsoft will help place in jobs.  “Microsoft wants to invest in that promise which recognises Africa’s promise.

“We want to empower African youths, entrepreneurs, developers and business and civic leaders to turn great ideas into reality that can help community, their country, the Continent and beyond. “The Initiative is built on the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate growth for Africa, and Africa can also accelerate technology for the world”. The Country Manager said that Microsoft was motivated to embark on the projects as part of its contributions to Africa’s transformation initiatives. He also announced that Microsoft has developed a new online hub through which Africa SMEs will have access to free, relevant products and services from Microsoft and other partners. “The hub will aggregate the available services which can help them expand their business locally, find new business opportunities outside their immediate geography and help increase their overall competitiveness,” he added.

As a welcome offer, he said that the company will provide free domain registration for the period of one year and free tools for qualifying SMEs interested in creating a professional web presence. “The world has recognized the promise of Africa, and Microsoft wants to invest in that promise. We want to empower African youth, entrepreneurs, developers and business and civic leaders to turn great ideas into a reality that can help their community, their country, the Continent, and beyond,” said Fernando de Sousa, general manager, Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative. The initiative, he went further is built on the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate growth for Africa, and Africa can also accelerate technology for the world.” Ernest Ndukwe, father of Nigeria modern telecom and Pat Utomi have expressed their delight in new Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative.

Ndukwe described the initiatives as timely and said it would deliver needed dividends to drive telecomm growth in the country. Ndukwe, the former executive vice chairman of the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) added that with youths as the targets, the initiative would propel increased attention on the telecomm value chain. “Microsoft should concentrate on the young people, because most initiatives advances made in relating to IT advancement have been with the young people.

In fact, the initiatives are timely, especially now government is very anxious in seeing that certain challenges that have not allowed the sector grow are faced squarely. “A lot have been said about issues concerning affordability, access, attractiveness and developing locally appealing contents. On the other hand, connectivity and access are critical in the Nigerian telecomm sector which led to questions on factors responsible for network congestions. “For all I know, the Federal government is determined to ensure the bottlenecks are removed. For instance, the Minister of Communication Technology has been meeting with State Governors on the issues of right of way (RoW) and some charges.

“There will be improvement in the sector before the end of 2012. So, Microsoft’s initiatives are right steps in the right direction,” Ndukwe said. On his part, Utomi said the programme makes a lot economic sense as they will accelerate development, particularly when the rural dwellers are incorporated into the projects. He maintained that technological education and programmes targeted at the SMEs must be encouraged to reverse the trend of opportunities and expertise exported from Nigeria to other countries. “For instance, if the Federal Government’s agenda of empowering framers with telephones prudently carried out, then we shall be talking about information dissemination to farmers; it is an economic empowerment initiative worth implementing. Now, Microsoft has shown that our challenges can be solved by our people. That is commendable,” he noted.

As a first critical step toward increasing the adoption of smart devices, Microsoft and Huawei are introducing the Huawei 4Afrika – a full functionality Windows Phone 8which will come pre-loaded with select applications designed for Africa. The phone will initially be available in Angola, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa later this month. The Huawei 4Afrika phone, which is the first in what will be a series of smart devices designed “4Afrika,” will be targeted toward university students, developers and first-time smart phone users to ensure they have affordable access to best-in-class technology to enable them to connect, collaborate, and access markets and opportunities online.

To improve technology access, Microsoft also announced the deployment of a pilot project with the Kenyan Ministry of Information and Communications and Kenyan Internet Service Provider, Indigo Telecom Ltd., to deliver low-cost, high-speed, wireless broadband and create new opportunities for commerce, education, healthcare, and delivery of government services across Kenya. The deployment is called “Mawingu,” which is Kiswahili for cloud. It is the first deployment of solar-powered base stations together with TV white spaces, a technology partially developed by Microsoft Research, to deliver high-speed Internet access to areas currently lacking even basic electricity.