Meta, the parent company of Facebook is highlighting key milestones achieved in their 2021 Africa Year in Review. The infographic shows some of Meta’s investments and initiatives across sub-Saharan Africa this year. They focused on driving innovation, connecting communities, helping businesses to grow and supporting the tech and creator ecosystem. Meta notes that it also reinforced its continued commitment to Africa through these projects.
The 2021 Africa year in review highlights includes the launch of Instagram lite, available in Swahili, Oromo and Amharic. The rolling out of Instagram awareness campaign in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. The rollout of Africa’s first paid online events in South Africa. Spotlighting of content creators in Nigeria and Ghana. Launch of Small Act, Big Impact initiative for community leaders in Kenya. Meta is set to officially launch Facebook Reels and Professional mode for creator profiles in EMEA next year.
Kezia Anim-Addo, Director for Communications, Sub-Saharan Africa, commented, saying: “This year we’ve witnessed an abundance of talent, growth and resilience from across Africa, despite the many challenges due to the ongoing COVID pandemic. It’s been inspiring to witness the development of various communities, from creators to SMBs and tech innovators.Many of whom are using Meta technologies to grow and develop their craft. We believe that Meta sits at the intersection of innovation, technology, entrepreneurship and social connection. We’re excited about the future of the continent, and Meta’s ongoing role in helping to unlock Africa’s potential.”
Some of the key 2021 Meta Africa Year in Review includes:
Facebook Marketplace: Rolled out Facebook Marketplace to 37 countries and territories across Sub-Saharan Africa. Enabling more people to discover, buy and sell items from others in their local communities.
Digital Literacy Trainings: Undertook digital literacy training, focused on online safety, privacy, news, media literacy and digital citizenship, across eight countries training over 65,000 people.
2Africa & 2Africa Pearl: Alongside eight local and global partners, announced the creation of new branches and a new segment of the subsea cable called ‘2Africa Pearls’. Which now connects three continents — Africa, Europe, and Asia. Making it the longest subsea cable system ever developed at more than 45,000 kilometres.
Economic Impact Trainings: Trained over 80,000 SMBs across 13 countries through our economic impact programmes, including Meta Boost (formerly Boost with Facebook) and SheMeansBusiness. Graduated 338 young people through the Digify Pro programme, with nearly 70% getting jobs.
Blood Donations feature: Now available across 12 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over 3.9m Facebook users in these countries signed up to receive blood donation notifications from local blood donation centers.
Instagram Lite: introduced Instagram Lite for Android and its availability in Swahili, Oromo and Amharic languages.
Made by Africa, Loved by the World: Celebrated Africa’s growing cultural impact on the world through a global campaign that showcased eight African creatives and businesses from Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire and Gabon.
2021 Facebook Community Accelerator Program: Announced the winners of the 2021 Facebook Community Accelerator Program, featuring 13 community leaders from Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya, who will receive training, mentorship and up to $50,000 USD in funds to invest in their community.
Instagram Reel Ads in 25 African countries: Expanded Reels Ads to countries in Africa with the Reels feature on Instagram – enabling businesses on Instagram to reach greater audiences and allowing people to discover inspiring new content from brands and creators.
SMB WhatsApp Bot: Launched ‘Facebook Business Coach’ on WhatsApp, an innovative and easily accessible way for SMBs in English speaking Africa to learn more about how to grow their business on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Africa No Filter & Meta Virtual Reality Fund: Announced the opening of the grants and mentoring program “Future Africa: Telling Stories, Building Worlds” aimed at boosting the use of Virtual Reality in Africa’s storytelling and helping to shift negative stereotypes about the continent.
Click to view the full infographic on Meta’s investments and activities in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2021. (https://bit.ly/3IuSJCZ). Download Infographic: https://bit.ly/3EGCErg
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Microsoft Teams Essential is a solution that brings the Teams collaboration platform into an affordable package. It provides an affordable entry point for remote collaboration that small businesses can take advantage of. At $4 USD per month, a user gets 30 hours of group video calls, group chat, file sharing, and calendaring.
This solution will enable teams to seamlessly meet, chat, call, and collaborate irrespective of the device or location. The new offering maximises value while minimising costs for businesses by centralising onto a single platform their collaboration tools at less the cost of a full Microsoft Teams suite.
According to David Behr, CEO of Liquid Cloud and Cyber Security, “Teams Essentials is an entry-level focused version of the Microsoft Office Suite that extends the Teams platform to medium and small businesses, typically twenty-five users and below. Liquid is proud to partner with Microsoft to deliver this affordable solution that supports the collaborative nature of small businesses, promoting enterprise in Africa”.
To enable seamless collaboration Microsoft Teams Essentials gives users access to its Microsoft online tools, i.e., Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Users will also be able to connect to Teams Essentials using a 3rd party email provider.
Liquid says Teams Essentials is another offering it is proud to launch across the African continent. Part of its strategic repositioning as an intelligent technology provider serving its customers’ rapidly evolving communication requirements across Africa.
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Microsoft Student Summit Africa (MSSA) is back and is scheduled to take place from 1st to 3rd December 2021. The free three-day virtual conference will seek to upskill and expose students to Microsoft technologies. With learning covering artificial intelligence, cloud computing, Microsoft Power Platform, web development, etc.
The event will have two days of learning with about 20 deep-dive sessions. Learners will form teams and collaborate on projects in a hackathon on the third day and compete to win prizes. Like the previous editions, there will be sessions on recruiting workshops for software engineer and program manager roles.
The Microsoft student summit is open to students in universities and tertiary institutions across Africa and the globe. But only students in Africa will be eligible to participate in the hackathon and win prizes.
Microsoft Africa Development Center is sponsoring the summit and learners will get the opportunity to hear and learn from Microsoft leaders and software engineers.
Click for more information and register your details to participate in the MSSA. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends or anyone who might benefit from this training.
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Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI) and Viasat Inc. are announcing the launch of the first Real-Time Earth (RTE) facility in Africa. The partnership hopes to bring new space opportunities and jobs to the region. And expand Viasat’s ability to deliver critical earth observation and remote sensing data on-demand around the world.
Viasat’s RTE satellite ground station facility is co-located at the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory, Kuntunse. It includes a Viasat full-motion 7.3M S/X/Ka-band antenna and associated infrastructure. The antenna is currently ready to provide global satellite operators with the ability to perform Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TT&C) capabilities as well as rapidly download, stream and/or disseminate valuable satellite-based data in a timely and secure manner.
Viasat worked in partnership with the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI), a government-based institution under Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC), focused on coordinating all space, science, technology and related activities in Ghana. The new facility hopes to contribute to Africa’s Technology and Space Growth Initiatives. By promoting new space opportunities and local job creation through ongoing site management and maintenance. With this new station, Viasat’s RTE global network is now active in five continents.
Eric Aggrey, research scientist and project manager of Ghana Radio Astronomy Project, GSSTI said, “The development of Viasat’s new antenna site has been an extremely positive opportunity for the people and economy of Ghana. We have positively grown our presence in the global space and technology sector and look forward to expanding our relationship with Viasat to bring additional new space opportunities, technologies and skillsets to Africa.”
“We knew we wanted to grow the network to cover Western Africa, and it was clear right away GSSTI was the best partner for us. It is a very professional organization that brings years of experience and expertise in antenna systems. We were evaluating several different locations in Ghana because it was an area that our customers identified as a gap in coverage — not just for RTE but for almost every ground-service provider. The Ghana site provides equatorial coverage and fills that gap in coverage for satellite operators looking to downlink imagery in a timely manner in this critical region of the world.”
Aaron Hawkins, Viasat RTE business manager
Viasat RTE provides Ground-Station-as-a-Service (GSaaS) capabilities in support of environmental, insurance, shipping, energy and government operations. It is a fully-managed, affordable ground network that supports next-generation and legacy geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO), medium earth orbit (MEO) and low earth orbit (LEO) satellites using the S-, X-, and Ka-bands, enabling operators to meet current and future data requirements.
“The new RTE ground station, located in Ghana, is part of Viasat’s strategic growth plan for a global RTE ground service network, with prior operations already located in North America, South America, Australia and Europe,” said John Williams, vice president, Real-Time Earth at Viasat. “By working in partnership with GSSTI, we have opened a state-of-the-art RTE facility, bringing jobs and economic growth to the region, while further differentiating Viasat’s service through our ability to provide satellite operators access to world-class antenna systems for high-speed RTE connectivity of payload data across a secure network.”
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Microsoft is bringing The Garage program to Africa with sites to be located in Kenya and Nigeria. The company says The Garage Nigeria, in Lagos, is currently in advanced planning stages, as are other Garage locations in Africa. New information reaching us including the search for a Senior Program Manager to lead the program confirms it is close.
The Garage is an extracurricular Microsoft resource for employees to connect, experiment and be creative outside of their day job. But that is not all, it will also be a creative space for hacking and making for the local tech ecosystem and Microsoft customers. Running hackathons, engineering internships, and an experimental outlet for its local students and tech communities.
There are 12 garage sites across the globe with the Africa sites to increase this number to 14. Microsoft could yet still increase this number with possible sites in South Africa, Senegal and Egypt.
I expect each Microsoft Garage site in Africa to have three dedicated lab sections just like all the other global sites. The lab sections will consist of a collaboration hub for hackathons and workshops, a Makerspace and an Advanced Makerspace. The advanced Makerspace will have an electronic workbench, 3D Printers, laser cutter, PCB milling machine for creating prototypes. A Reality Room dedicated to working in the space of Augmented Reality (AR) Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality applications and dedicated space and equipment for doing work on Deep Learning.
Every person at Microsoft has the ability to come up with a good idea. The Garage is here to help.
Jeff Ramos, GM The Garage
The Microsoft Garage in Africa
“The Garage is a program designed to support our employees’ creative ambitions and innovative instincts,” says Jeff Ramos, general manager of The Garage. “Every person at Microsoft has the ability to come up with a good idea. The Garage is here to help our great people shape and develop those ideas. We need a place for people to feel confident to take creative liberties, and that place is The Garage.”
Ramos says Microsoft is going to learn how to do business better worldwide by learning in Africa. Noting that in Lagos, Microsoft sees a tremendous opportunity to learn as a company and as a culture.
For Gafar Lawal, principal group manager at Microsoft ADC Nigeria it will be essential to both tantalize and satisfy employees’ creative curiosities. Adding that the Garage will support employees as they continue to learn at every stage of their careers.
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Oracle and Orange are announcing an agreement to accelerate cloud-led digital transformation in West Africa. The collaboration will see the companies build Oracle’s Cloud regions using Orange’s infrastructure in Senegal and Ivory Coast. This they say aligns with their common objective of ensuring that all customer data is hosted locally. Providing customers with cloud services that meet their data latency and performance requirements. This comes a few weeks after Oracle announced that it has chosen Johannesburg, South Africa as the site of its first African datacentre. The company is currently planning to launch 13 new cloud regions across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.
The companies will jointly offer cloud services for enterprises and public sector organizations in West Africa. Starting with offerings in Senegal and Ivory Coast. For this initiative, Orange plans to use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to complement its portfolio of enterprise-grade managed cloud services.
The planned joint go-to-market model is intended to support West African enterprises and public organizations in addressing the challenge of digital transformation. Through advanced cloud services, enabling operational efficiency, lower costs and high-security standards.
The two companies also plan to collaborate on a project to migrate part of Orange’s internal applications onto Oracle Cloud. In order to generate greater efficiencies through digitalization, particularly in administrative processes. Discussions are ongoing to define the scope, conditions and feasibility of this strategic step. Oracle and Orange also intend to jointly promote their health solutions, especially in the area of vaccination.
We strongly believe that digital technology is a catalyst for economic transformation on the African continent says Alioune Ndiaye, Chairman and CEO, Orange Middle-East and Africa. Contributing to sustainable employment and socio-economic development, he adds. “Cloud infrastructure is one of the key solutions Orange brings to companies and public institutions in its role as a multi-service operator. Oracle’s industry-recognized solutions should bring additional value to Orange’s Cloud portfolio.”
“With improved bandwidth access and increased awareness of the benefits of cloud computing, organizations in the West and Sub-Saharan Africa region have begun exploring migrating workloads to the cloud. This initiative with Orange is an important step toward introducing world-class cloud infrastructure in the region,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
“As organizations in West Africa start their digital transformations, we look forward to joining with Orange to offer a rich portfolio of cloud infrastructure services,” says Jonathan Tikochinsky, executive vice president, Global Strategic Clients Group at Oracle. “This partnership brings the power of Oracle’s OCI services and Orange’s extensive managed cloud services that will empower organizations to take advantage of the efficiency, cost savings and increased security that the cloud provides.”
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