3 Kenyan and Ugandan projects receive Microsoft and National Geographic AI for Earth Innovation Grant to support research and scientific discovery with AI technologies.
Microsoft announces new recipients of its AI for Earth Innovation award. A joint $1.2M grant program offered by Microsoft and National Geographic to 11 grantees. AI for Earth is designed to advance the use of Artificial Intelligence in scientific exploration and research to help solve critical environmental challenges.
Out of more than 200 applications received, 3 projects from Africa were included in the 11 chosen projects to recieve funding. These are led by changemakers; Ketty Adoch, Torsten Bondo and Stephanie Dolrenry. They will receive financial support, access to Microsoft cloud and AI tools, inclusion in the National Geographic Explorer community and affiliation with National Geographic Labs.
The Microsoft and National Geographic AI for Earth Innovation Grant winners will use these resources to support their projects and better protect the planet.
Microsoft shares that the new grant offering will support research and scientific discovery with AI technologies to advance agriculture, biodiversity conservation, climate change and water.
Below are profiles of the winning grant projects;
Ketty Adoch Geographical information systems specialist from Uganda. Her AI for Earth Innovation Grant project will detect, quantify and monitor land cover change in the area surrounding Lake Albert and Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda’s largest and oldest national park.
Stephanie Dolrenry Director of Wildlife Guardians, based in Washington, D.C. Her team will use the AI for Earth Innovation Grant to help support the Lion Identification Network of Collaborators, an AI-assisted collaborative database for lion identification and interorganizational research.
Torsten Bondo Business development manager and senior remote sensing engineer at DHI GRAS in Denmark. With the AI for Earth Innovation Grant, his team aims to use machine learning and satellites to support irrigation development and improve crop water efficiency in Uganda together with the Ugandan geo-information company Geo Gecko. The goal is to contribute to food security, poverty alleviation and economic growth.
Previous beneficiaries of the Microsoft AI for Earth grant are Peace Parks Foundation, South Africa, International Center for tropical Agriculture, Kenya, I.T.Grapes, Tunisia, Energyrathon Consulting Ltd, Nigeria, etc.
How Microsoft and National Geographic AI for Earth Innovation Grantee is detecting land cover changes in Uganda.
“Ketty Adoch is working to address competition between preserving iconic species and mining natural resources in the same area. A huge advocate for applying technology tools to geographic data, she will use supervised classification and machine learning on satellite images to detect changes in the shape or size of land cover types, like shadows from changing tree cover. She’ll conduct these analyses both historically and, once promising algorithms have been developed, on an ongoing basis for the coming decade. The key outcomes — algorithms and maps to document the findings — will enable researchers, conservationists and technologists to monitor land cover change in the area, see the impact of oil activities and support conservation efforts going forward.”
It’s been reported that the planned 2018 initial availability of Microsoft’s datacenters didn’t go live because of “the inability of a third-party supplier to deliver to specification“. It is however expected in 2019, but no dates have been confirmed yet because apparently it is an “unprecedented level of infrastructure“.
Microsoft announced in May 2017 that it was going to deliver its Microsoft Cloud from datacenters in Africa. By opening an Azure region in Africa, with two datacenters in South Africa. In Johannesburg, South Africa North and Cape Town, South Africa West. The announcement said the datacenters will be delivered with initial availability in 2018. I have often wondered and paid attention to know when, as this affects our region in many ways.
Microsoft South Africa’s Director of Commercial Partners, Lionel Moyal, said the two Azure datacenter regions are due to go live at the end of 2018. He said we are within weeks. Lionel was speaking to entrepreneurs and startups at the Global Entrepreneurship Week 2018 in South Africa about Microsoft’s new Head Start initiative. He shared that “latency will not be an issue any more. It is not just for South Africa it is a cloud for Africa. About creating trust and impactful projects”.
From an investment point of view Lionel Moyal said IDC reports South Africa expects to add 112,000 IT specific jobs by 2022. That there is a shortage of skills in IT jobs. And the growth rate of IT jobs is 3 times more than national job opportunities. People need to skill up in cloud technologies, machine learning, AI, mobile technologies, development tools.
Head Start initiative to provide support for startups in South Africa
Microsoft introduced a new initiative designed to help startups at this years Global Entrepreneurship Week in South Africa. During the tech day session it announced Head Start, an initiative to provide the package it offers its partners to Startups in South Africa.
Making the announcement and speaking on Building an IP economy in South Africa was Lionel Moyal, Director Commercial Partners Ecosystem. It is an exciting day to take what Microsoft does with partners in south Africa and extend it to what startups actually need. We get how critical entrepreneurship is especially in the South African context where job creation is vital if we are to improve our economy.
We will support you
to find your first customers
and get your products to market
as quickly as possible.
He shared that Head Start is about opening doors. Opening the Technology, Business and Compliance, Regulation and legal door to startups. It is a support program, through skills development, access to coaches and mentors. (As a startup you can be alone, you don’t know where to go, you need advise, to talk to someone who understands AI, Services, Manufacturing, etc.)
Lionel shared that Head Start isn’t about Microsoft giving you funding nor taking equity in your startups. It’s your IP(intellectual property), we just want you to leverage our platform and use the ecosystem we make available. We will support you to find your first customers and get your products to market as quickly as possible. We know that is one of the hardest thing to do from a startup perspective.
More on what Lionel Moyal shared about Microsoft Head Start
We are in a transformative time where Digital technology is taking over. Everything is becoming digitized. There isn’t a single industry which hasn’t had an impact with digital technology. All the different tools exist today on demand.
Microsoft today is a completely new organization. We are a platform company with a mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. It’s about we make the technologies that other people use to make solutions. We enable but our partners create the solutions that solve the worlds challenges.
As a startup time isn’t your friend.
Our partner model is fundamentally founded on being proactive. We enable success and require our partners to deliver transformative solutions. We proactively work with you to deliver great solutions using out platform.
As a startup time isn’t your friend. Your success is deepened on your partnerships and how well you can leverage the ecosystem. We want to create an ecosystem of creators not consumers. It is about the startups and partners who will make something about it. If you are a startup in tech, there are no borders in this digital economy, your market is the world.
The head start initiative will launch with local Microsoft partners tarsus, BUI, First Distribution, Britehouse, Rectron, Senetic, CloudLogic, Tangent Solutions and Liquid Telecom volunteering to help startups take products to market at scale.
As a startup partner you’ ll get ;
Interested in knowing more and want to get started?
You can also listen to Lionel’s discussion with Africa Business Radio podcast about this initiative or watch the event video below.
Microsoft opens the Microsoft Innovation Lab in partnership with KidZania, a Future Ready Initiative.
Through Microsoft’s Future Ready initiative it has partnered with KidZania Kuwait to open an innovation lab. The Microsoft Future Ready initiative is a partnership program with communities and organizations to bring computer science education to young people. The initiative provides young people with digital literacy and skills. Providing them the opportunity to develop opportunity to develop their creative, critical thinking and problem solving skills.
Working with KidZania Kuwait, an interactive edutainment center hopes this will spark creativity. It shares that “kids will learn how to imagine, have fun and be creative in a whole new way through 3 excitingly innovative activities”. These activities include STEM experiments, Robotics coding and 3D wall painting.
Microsoft shared some details about the new Microsoft Innovation Lab at KidZania;
“Microsoft Innovation Lab at KidZania Kuwait will empower kids in learning by doing. From hacking STEM to making code. The Microsoft Innovation Lab will offer a choice to experience 3 different activities that promote creativity, collaboration, computational thinking & problem-solving“.
Microsoft and KidZania invite parents to bring their “kids for an unforgettable experience that will make them future ready”.
Microsoft Ignite The Tour will take place in Johannesburg, Tel Aviv and Dubai in 2019
Microsoft’s annual developers and IT professionals conference, Ignite, is hitting the roads. Microsoft Ignite is going global and will be in a city near you. Microsoft promises to bring the same vibe to you on this tour during a two day event. This announcement came at the end of the conference which took place in Orlando, Florida just some days ago. Next years will also be in Orlando and you can pre-register for Microsoft Ignite 2019 now.
Announcing #MSIgniteTheTour, a free technical training event for developers & tech professionals. 100+ deep-dive sessions, expert connections, and community building.
From all indications Microsoft Ignite The Tour seems to be a replacement for Microsoft TechSummit which has the same goal. So TechSummit fans this will be the go to event next year.
Promising over 100 sessions the event will help you grow your skills, explore new technology and connect with Microsoft engineers. If you are planning to attend there will be so many topics and sessions you’ll need to tailor the experience to what you want to leave with.
In the Microsoft Middle East and Africa region the conferences will take place in Johannesburg, Tel Aviv and Dubai. The Johannesburg, South Africa event is scheduled to take place January 28-29, 2019. January 22-23, 2019 in Tel Aviv, Israel and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 27-28, 2019.
Dear Microsoft can we have some of these events across West, North and East Africa? Thank You. I think I spoke the mind of a lot of developers and IT Pros in the region.
Head over to the Microsoft Ignite The Tour event pages of each city for more details and register.
Missed out on the Microsoft Ignite 2018 Keynote? No worries watch it right here ?
Have you had an experience at any Microsoft developer or IT Pro event? Share your experience with us. Looking forward to attending? Share your thoughts with us.
Meet the grant recipients of the 2018 Microsoft Airband Initiative
A ColdHubs storage ?: ColdHubs
Microsoft has announced the eight early-stage companies selected for its third annual Airband Grant Fund. This year 3 companies from Africa become grant recipients. These are ColdHubs – Nigeria, MeshPower – Rwanda and Agsol – Kenya.
This brings the total number of grant partners in Africa to 19. Other recipients of the initiative are Spectra Wireless – Ghana, VisionNet – DRC, My Digital Bridge – Namibia, iSizwe – South Africa, C3 – Malawi, Mawingu – Kenya amongst others. Last year 6 African entrepreneurs were awarded in its 2nd year.
“As a global technology company,
we believe we have a responsibility and a great opportunity
to help close this gap”. – Microsoft
The Airband Initiative grant from Microsoft is a partnership with equipment makers, internet, energy access providers and local entrepreneurs. With this partnership Microsoft believes the initiative will provide access that unconnected and underserved communities need to thrive.
The grant partners receive financing, technology, mentorship, networking opportunities and other support. This helps to “scale the start-ups’ innovative new technologies, services and business models”.
Microsoft says “today, internet access is as essential as electricity. It empowers entrepreneurs to start and grow small businesses. Farmers to implement precision agriculture, doctors to improve community health and students to do better in school. But almost half the world’s population is still not online. Often because they live in underserved areas, and therefore miss out on opportunities to take advantage of and become part of the digital economy. As a global technology company, we believe we have a responsibility and a great opportunity to help close this gap“.
Grant recipients of the 2018 Microsoft Airband Initiative
MeshPower
Based in Kigali, Rwanda, MeshPower focuses on providing energy to off-grid regions. They’ve developed a smart, internet connected, PV DC microgrid which delivers 48V DC energy to customers at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions.
Cold Hubs
Based in Owerii, Nigeria, Cold Hubs provides solar-powered walk-in cold rooms to help eliminate the impact of food spoilage, which affects 470 million farmers globally. Their next phase of innovation involves equipping the cold rooms with Wi-Fi hotspots.
Agsol
Agsol, based in Nairobi, Kenya, is a startup that manufactures solar powered agro-processing machines for off-grid farming communities. Their machines process crops such as maize flour, milled rice, and grated cassava and excess power is used for lights, phone chargers, and small appliances.
Microsoft shares the innovative story of ColdHubs, a 2018 Microsoft Airband Initiative grant recipient
?: ColdHubs
ColdHubs is another organization finding innovative ways to tackle the broadband access challenge. In Owerri, Nigeria, ColdHubs is transforming their refrigerated crop storage rooms into Wi-Fi hot spots using TVWS technology. The company aims to empower smallholder farmers with the ability to earn better livelihoods. Their solar-powered crop storage facilities help reduce food spoilage, which causes 470 million smallholder farmers to lose 25 percent of their annual income. Farmers who use ColdHubs can extend the freshness of their fruits and vegetables from two to about 21 days, reducing post-harvest loss by 80 percent. By turning these facilities into Wi-Fi “Farm Connect Centers,” ColdHubs will enable farmers to get online and access agricultural training, resources to improve crop yields and marketing and digital skills training.
