Wentors, Microsoft to provide mentorship and training to 1,000 women in tech

Wentors, Microsoft to provide mentorship and training to 1,000 women in tech

women in tech Microsoft Women

Wentors is partnering with Microsoft to provide mentorship and training to one thousand women in tech. Through the initiative Microsoft 4Afrika will provide a platform to encourage women working in the technology industry in Africa.

Wentors is a global community of women in technology mentoring and nurturing each other through a platform in which experienced women in the tech industry can mentor upcoming young women joining the industry, and final year students looking to start a technology career.

The initiative was launched by Microsoft 4Afrika employee, EduAbasi Chukwunweike, a graduate in software engineering with her Masters’ degree in Informatics. Chukwunweike noticed that as a solutions specialist in the enterprise team responsible for the cloud business in Nigeria, most of her conversations within the customer environment were with men. This got her thinking about how she could make an impact with gender diversity in the technology industry, and ultimately led to the launch of Wentors.

We believe the people best situated to nurture these dreams are the women currently in technology and hence we are redefining the mentorship roadmap by building a global community of women in technology who nurture each other,” says Chukwunweike.

The organisation runs Cohorts programmes, eight to 12-week periods during which each mentor commits to an hour-long weekly session with her mentee. The cohorts have weekly themes and provide the mentors with mentorship packages to guide them through the process. As part of the cohort, the programme provides soft skills training and webinars in areas such as personal branding, networking, communication and Imposter syndrome. The goal of this training is to provide women entering the tech industry with the skills necessary to thrive and sustain a career within the tech ecosystem. The Wentors community grants its participants access to expertise crucial for career progression.

An opportunity to interact with great women in the tech space and having them give me an insight of the job market and ways to improve myself before getting into the job market is such a bonus for me, considering I am a student,” comments Anne Wariara, a participant from Kenya. “Being exposed to workshops that enable me grow my soft skill is also the best considering most institutions dwell on equipping us with technical skills and overlooking on the soft skills which often play a huge role in our career,” she adds.

The programmes are all facilitated virtually, which enables a global audience to participate, and uses a platform that leverages AI algorithms to match mentors with mentees, and a mentoring framework with a set number of sessions, continuous feedback between mentors and mentees, and a progress measurement. The organisation uses Microsoft’s Office 365 and hosts all its training and webinars using Teams.

To date, Wentors has facilitated mentorship among 240 women across four continents, with a community of over 900 members. Now, the programme has set itself an ambitious target of facilitating 1,000 mentorships across the world. To achieve this lofty goal, the organisation is partnering with different communities and tech companies.

Meeting this goal is vitally important, as this brings us closer to increasing the numbers of women represented in the tech industry,” comments Chukwunweike.

Our ultimate goal is to have women in technology make up 50% across all positions in the IT industry, which amounts to impacting the lives of 8 million women globally“.

It’s evident by the significant investments into skills development and educational programmes that Microsoft believes in upskilling our youth to have the right skills to succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is a social, moral and economic necessity to ensure young girls and women in Africa are given the skills to master technology and increase the number of future-ready professionals,” she adds.

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Check out other stories making the news across Africa and Middle East region.

Microsoft announces new South Africa Managing Director

Microsoft announces new South Africa Managing Director

Microsoft announces that Lillian Barnard, Director of Public Sector will assume a new role as South Africa Managing Director.

South Africa Managing Director

Lillian Barnard we know has been very active in fostering the women at Microsoft community. DigiGirlz, and other coding initiatives that empower women and girls in technology.

At AfricaCom 2017 we had the opportunity to hear her talk about Microsoft’s Digital transformation being critical to businesses in Africa.

As Microsoft South Africa Public Sector Director, she has helped in shaping the countries digital transformation journey. With programs that include digital skills developement and digital transformation of businesses.

New South Africa Managing Director

Microsoft says “During her tenure at Microsoft, Barnard has pulled together a strong Public Sector team that has delivered innovative digital solutions and helped digitally transform the South African Government.
She has also been pivotal in re-igniting the South African chapter of Women At Microsoft and spurring a culture that embraces gender equality in the workplace.
Her development and impact as a leader, as a spokesperson, as technologist and as a seller within Microsoft have positioned her as an ideal successor capable of leading Microsoft South Africa into its next exciting chapter
“.

Lillian will take over from Zoaib Hoosen who has been at the post for about 5 years.

Succeeding someone who has led with such distinction is an honour” she shares. “Zoaib has ensured that I will be taking over an extraordinary organisation. The business truly is in a strong position as a result of his commitment over the last five years. I am planning to continue to drive this growth as we move forward“.

Microsoft 4Afrika #Interns4Afrika Dynamics 365 Nigeria Internship Opportunities

Microsoft 4Afrika #Interns4Afrika Dynamics 365 Nigeria Internship Opportunities

Microsoft 4Afrika’s Skills #Interns4Afrika Internship Africa initiative offers you a way to build work experience in a thriving environment.

Dynamics 365 Nigeria

Do you live in Nigeria? Get to be a Dynamics 365 Technical Support, Sales or Marketing intern. Microsoft’s Intern4Afrika initiative will offer the intern a unique experience with a dynamic and agile technology organization.
The intern will get the opportunity to work for 6 months with a Microsoft partner organization on real projects. Get to collaborate and learn from your colleagues. You can also get to be hired by the firm depending on your performance and if you are interested in being hired after the internship program.

For more question about the Interns4Afrika program, check out the program FAQ’s 

Kindly click on links below to apply on the Microsoft 4Afrika Interns4Afrika FUZU page. Sign up and fill away. All the best.

Lagos

Abuja

All the best to you as you apply. If you do get in, come back and share the experience with us? Also kindly report any broken links so we can fix them. Thank you.

Scaling startups and helping small businesses grow

Scaling startups and helping small businesses grow

Microsoft 4Afrika is helping startups across the continent scale up with ripple effects on other local businesses

One area that Microsoft focuses on with its investment in Africa is investing in local technology solutions. Microsoft makes it clear that “Africa has the potential to lead the technology revolution”. Since the inception of 4Afrika, it boasts of 64 funded and 94 Startups it supports. With these startups generating a total of $5.1 million in reciprocal investments.

Startups are very dear to Microsoft’s heart. As our mission is to identify and support the best startups in Africa to become successful companies.” – Djiba Diallo, Microsoft 4Afrika Innovation Lead

One such startup benefiting from this support is MoVAS Group. Microsoft 4Afrika says “MoVAS has worked closely with Microsoft to develop and scale their solution”.

To give you a background on this take a look at this video.

Microsoft 4Afrika supports Startups 

MoVAS has 12 million users on its platform across Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Somalia, the Republic of Congo and Swaziland. Issuing loans to thousands of customers across Africa daily. MoVAS needed a platform to manage and grow their offering in a cost-effective way. Microsoft offered assistance through its MySkills4Afrika volunteer program.

MoVAS services were migrated to Microsoft’s Azure platform. Now it is possible for them to crunch large volumes of data faster, more accurately and with less human resources. MoVAS say “the results has been a 300% jump in lending, meaning even more people can now access finance”.

“Going forward, MoVAS plans to move all their hosted services to Azure. They also plan to rewrite their credit scoring algorithms to be tightly coupled with Data Lakes, machine learning and artificial intelligence sitting on top of Azure. By doing so, they hope to on-board new clients in two to three weeks, instead of the usual three months”.

We engage with startups to understand the challenges they encounter and support them. This is core to our mission of empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.” – Djiba Diallo, Microsoft 4Afrika Innovation Lead 

MoVAS provides a lifeline to its customers, usually small business owners, rural farmers, women, etc. Who are able to access the previously up hill task of getting a small financial boost. These smaller businesses are also now able to sustain or grow theirs. 

There are other such stories and we look forward to sharing them with you. What do you think about Microsoft’s engagement with startups. Got a startup story to share? Talk to us. 

 

An Internship program changed the life of a Kenyan and how interns are catalysts to Digital Transformation in Businesses

An Internship program changed the life of a Kenyan and how interns are catalysts to Digital Transformation in Businesses

A story of how an internship program changed a life. Microsoft 4Afrika’s Interns4Afrika initiative is providing a platform for Africans to develop and build skills. 

The internship program offers young enthusiastic people an exciting experience with Microsoft and Microsoft partner organizations. You get to apply learnt knowledge, learn and develop new skill sets on the job. With this offer you work for 6 months on real projects and collaborate and learn from your colleagues as well. 

Lutz Ziob, Dean of the Microsoft 4Afrika Academy shares on internship and why interns can be essential ingredients for companies undergoing digital transformation. 

internship program

Photo : PC Tech Magazine

Six months ago, a young Kenyan named Gilbert Ngetich was living in Gataka, a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. Unemployed, but with a deep passion for learning, Gilbert would study by himself in a men’s washroom, as it was the only accessible place with good light and an electrical socket. 

Today, Gilbert has a full-time job as a Cloud Engineer at M2M Systems Limited, a partner of Microsoft. One of the first tasks in his role was to travel to the international Microsoft Inspire conference in Washington D.C, to learn, network and make new business contacts. It was the first time Gilbert had ever flown on an aeroplane. 

When interns, like Gilbert, enter the Interns4Afrika program, many of them have never heard of cloud computing, data analytics or machine learning. But we have seen how interns, even if only a few weeks into the program, are being entrusted by their host organisations to take on responsibilities that are unheard of for an intern. Similarly, we find that our graduates become very employable in digital marketing or technical services roles.  

Looking to try an opportunity like this check out the recent offers available in your country  Also don’t forget to subscribe {on homepage} to be alerted of future opportunities.

The value of internship programs

Internships are a necessary piece of the puzzle – bridging the last-mile skills gap between job-seekers and employers. Internships give youth the on-the-job experience and workforce skills they need to shape their career, while employers can scout for the best talent, gain fresh perspectives and access to youth who grew up as digital natives.

For companies undergoing digital transformation, an internship program could in fact be one of the best investments they make. Interns are, by nature, hungry to learn, highly coachable and more than willing to adjust to changes and disruptions in your business. Because they are less bound by old experiences, they are more agile, which can mean accelerated transformation.

What caused this change? An internship program.

An interesting scenario in Africa 

We face a perplexing and unsustainable scenario in Africa. On the one hand, we have high levels of youth unemployment. South Africa’s unemployment rate, for example, recently hit its highest level in 13 years. In the next 20 years, over 330 million young Africans are expected to enter the job market, but only a third of them will be able to find wage jobs.

On the other hand, we have companies struggling to find and hire the right talent to remain relevant and competitive in the digital transformation era. Like Gilbert, who before had never heard of a Cloud Engineer, the 2016 World Economic Forum Report on growing economies in Africa reports that 65% of schoolchildren today will work in jobs that don’t exist yet. It adds that only 1% of these children currently completing school will have the required digital skills.

Bridging this skills gap needs to begin at school level. To effectively tackle the youth unemployment problem, we need to provide youth with improved access to the internet, devices and curriculum aligned to future job prospects. We need to identify the very skills that will get them employed and then deploy efficient learning approaches that will help them acquire these skills that lead to exciting career opportunities.

A large number of multinational corporations, including Microsoft, have launched free online learning platforms, designed to upskill millions of young Africans. But online learning – although providing a fundamental base – is not enough. 

Internship Programs and Digital transformation 

As important as hard skills are, there is also a deficiency in workforce skills, including communication, collaboration, agility and leadership. As we navigate through the fourth industrial revolution of business, these skills are becoming increasingly vital. When we speak about digital transformation, we don’t only speak about organisations implementing technology advancements. We also speak about cultural changes. Technology enables more collaborative, productive and agile working environments – and youth need the skills, attitudes and professionalism to successfully navigate these.

Workforce skills are often best acquired in real-world working environments. What we need, therefore, is a blended learning methodology, combining online learning with real-world, hands-on experiences. Interns4Afrika is one of the programs that combines the appropriate what (i.e. skills and capabilities needed), with an effective how (i.e. results-driven learning and training methodologies).

As Arkadi Kuhlmann, founder and CEO of ING Direct USA, said in an interview: “If you want to renew and re-energise an industry, don’t hire people from that industry. You’ve got to untrain them and then retrain them. I’d rather hire a jazz musician or a dancer. They can learn about banking. It’s much harder for bankers to unlearn their bad habits.”
For this reason, the Harvard Business Review coined a new mantra: Hire for attitude. Train for skill. 

There are employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for African youth. What they need is the ability to adapt.

With any internship program, it is important to support the onboarding process;

provide training in marketing, sales and digital/technology areas; develop general workplace productivity skills; and offer regular coaching support and peer-to-peer mentoring.

It may seem like a lot of work, but the investment more than often proves worthwhile. Of the 400 internships Microsoft 4Afrika has driven, 80% – 100% of these graduates (depending on the region) have gone on to secure full-time employment – often with their host organisations.

There are employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for African youth. What they need is the ability to adapt to the changing economic needs and master the digital and vocational skills necessary to succeed in evolving business environments.

Modern technology is changing the way we work, learn, communicate, collaborate and entertain ourselves. It is essential for our youth to understand this digital transformation and seize the new, exciting opportunities being created by it. Africa’s youth need to find ways of participating in the process, or better, become the driving forces behind it. 

As Dean of the Microsoft 4Afrika Academy, Lutz Ziob’s job is to ensure that Microsoft 4Afrika delivers opportunities for Africans to create world class skills. This means providing world-class education services, both online and offline to help develop skills for improved employability, entrepreneurship and global competitiveness. The 4Afrika Academy will offer technical, business and leadership skills to students, government leaders and the broad Microsoft partner community in Africa.