Microsoft launch Africa Development Center in Lagos

Microsoft launch Africa Development Center in Lagos

Microsoft officially launched the Lagos Africa Development Center site at an event in Nigeria. The Lagos team will develop Azure services that power new Augmented Reality experiences for Microsoft’s mixed-reality platform. An investment that will enable digital transformation to create sustained societal impact in Africa says Microsoft.

Lagos Africa Development Center
Microsoft executives

Presidential Visit

Earlier in the day, Microsoft Nigeria Country manager Akin Banuso led the visiting Microsoft executives to meet with Nigerian Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo.

Phil Spencer, Microsoft Executive Vice President of Gaming leading the visiting executives told the vice president about the project. He said Microsoft’s investments are an ambition on the African continent to create a global centre for excellence and development.

It is what makes Microsoft what it is.

Lagos Africa Development Center launch event

Lagos Africa Development Center
Lagos Launch event

Later at the launch event, Nigeria country Manager, Akin Banuso said “our teams will help build products with global impact. We will work with local partners and customers to improve our products for the continent and beyond. This is part of our commitment to creating opportunities for every person. It is what makes Microsoft what it is.”

Microsoft executives at the launch event included Alex Kipman, Michael Fortin and Phil Spencer. It also had other Microsoft engineers and members of the new team in Lagos.

As part of the announcement, Microsoft will recruit exceptional engineering talent to build innovative solutions. Microsoft had also held a similar event to launch the ADC Nairobi site. The Nairobi site team will focus on Windows development.

We have chosen Kenya and Nigeria, as they present a strategic opportunity for us to better understand a continent that is rapidly adopting cloud technology and massive innovation at the intelligent edge.” Michael Fortin, Corporate Vice President, Windows

Alex Kipman

Lagos Africa Development Center
Alex Kipman, Microsoft Technical Fellow Mixed Reality and Artificial Intelligence address the gathering at the launch event.

I am incredibly proud that Africa, the cradle of civilization, now has the opportunity to define the future of computing. I’m inspired by all the creativity and energy of the startups and entrepreneurs here in Lagos, Nigeria. Microsoft will be engaging deeply with developers and universities amongst others. – Alex Kipman

Meet the founding Microsoft ADC cognition team in Lagos Nigeria.

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Microsoft is opening a Mixed Reality and AI engineering office in Lagos, Nigeria

Microsoft is opening a Mixed Reality and AI engineering office in Lagos, Nigeria

engineering office

Microsoft is opening an engineering office to build Mixed Reality Cloud Services in Lagos, Nigeria.

UPDATE: Microsoft announces software engineering team at its Africa Development Center site in Lagos will develop Azure services that power new Augmented Reality.

Microsoft is increasing its investments on African soil. It is launching two development centers in Africa. With offices in Kenya and Nigeria. Early this month Microsoft’s planned Africa datacenters became a reality and went live in South Africa.
Last year in partnership with Techno Brain Limited Microsoft opened Africa’s first Software Testing Centre in Kenya. It also opened its first Africa customer service support center in Lagos, Nigeria in partnership with Tek Experts.

The latest announcement was highlighted by Alex Kipman, Microsoft’s technical fellow for AI and Mixed Reality. Alex is known as the man behind Microsoft HoloLens. A software engineering job posting on Microsoft’s career page gives more details about this.

The role description says Microsoft is launching a “Cognition Africa engineering team to build Mixed Reality Cloud Services”. And asks software engineers who meet the qualifications to apply.

Here’s what the job posting tells us about the Mixed reality and AI engineering office in Lagos.

We are launching a Cognition Africa engineering team to build Mixed Reality Cloud Services that bring those technologies to a wider range of devices. Do you want to join us on this journey? We are offering opportunities for passionate Software Engineers to help us build the team and suite of cloud services which bring these capabilities to the cloud“.

Alex Kipman in his tweet also says “looking forward to my first visit soon“. I want to believe we might have a HoloLens 2 showcase event in town soon. Microsoft unveiled the HoloLens 2 recently at the 2019 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.