Kendi Nderitu, Microsoft Country Manager for Kenya says “My ambition is to collaborate with the public and private sector to help adopt and accelerate Kenya’s digital transformation agenda”.
Kendi Ntwiga-Nderitu shared this ambition speaking to Nation Africa in an interview on her career journey. She notes her career journey’s ups and downs have been rewarding.
The interview touches on her life, childhood, family life, education, career and current role at Microsoft Kenya. It also talks about lessons and advice to the youth in Kenya. Below are some excerpts. Click the link to read the full interview.
Kendi talks about growing up in Embu county before moving upcountry. She studied computer science then decided to pursue International Business Management as she wanted to lead a business in the tech industry.
She also advises girls to “Show up as a person first and deliver at that level“.
I have failed many times, but more importantly, this has taught me to have an open mind and to be agile enough to promptly re-group if plan A does not work.
Kendi Nderitu
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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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Kwik Delivery is announcing that it has closed its pre-Series A financing round. The startup successfully raised $1.7 million in equity from institutional and high net worth investors.
“Kwik Delivery has demonstrated to customers and investors alike its efficiency as well as the relevance of its bold technology-based approach during a most challenging period” explains Romain POIROT-LELLIG, Founder & CEO. “This financing round is enabling us to grow even faster and to disrupt and conquer new markets.”
Kwik Delivery is an on-demand, last-mile delivery platform that connects African businesses to independent delivery riders, dubbed Kwiksters. Launched in 2019, the Kwik platform is currently open to Kwiksters operating in Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria.
Using the app, customers able to request a delivery vehicle and track their shipment in real-time. It also provides insurance for goods in transit.
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African Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) is announcing a US$1.2 million innovation fund to unlock the potential of renewable energy to create new business opportunities in Africa.
Entrepreneurs and Businesses using renewable energy located in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe can apply for funding. The deadline for the applications is 29th April 2021.
The innovation fund is aimed at strengthening the market readiness of emerging innovations. As well as helping to secure financial, technical, and networking support for taking existing proven prototypes to scale.
Solutions that reduce the negative impacts associated with the use of traditional cooking options at the household and institutional levels, build climate change resilience among communities and support productive uses such as water pumping, agro-processing, cooling, and refrigeration services are examples that the Fund seeks to support.
In applying, businesses and entrepreneurs will need to demonstrate how their proposed innovations will transform the livelihoods of low-income households through the creation of jobs and diversification of livelihoods.
Under the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the world has set an ambitious target of ensuring universal access to reliable and sustainable energy by the end of the decade. But with half of the African continent without access to electricity, and two-thirds lacking access to clean cooking solutions, additional investment is needed to drive innovation and accelerate the uptake of modern energy.
The Innovation Fund builds on AECF’s Renewable Energy and Adaptation to Climate Technologies (REACT) initiative, which was launched to support the private sector develop and expand its clean energy technologies to Africa’s rural communities. The Fund will invest in technologies that meet market needs as well as accelerating the development of existing solutions to better serve African communities and not technologies in the prototype stage.
“The Innovation Fund is key to enhancing large scale transformation within local communities. Investing in affordable and accessible renewable energy solutions can create jobs, grow economies, and build more sustainable livelihoods. Through the fund, we hope to unearth new ways that renewable technology – be it domestic, communal, or commercial – can be used to generate income and create jobs.”
Victoria Sabula, CEO of AECF
For more information on how to access the fund kindly visit www.AECFafrica.org for more details.
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Online trading is becoming increasingly popular, with Modern Trader reporting that the number of global online traders has grown from 9.5 million four years ago, to more than 15 million today.
Dany Mawas, Regional Director at INFINOX, a leading CFD and FX broker with an international presence including in Africa, attributes this growth to technological advances, which makes trading convenient and fast. Traders can now trade from anywhere and at any time and will get quick, easy access to the markets.
“Apart from the potential of achieving lucrative financial returns, additional benefits of online trading includes greater financial knowledge and developing associated skills with trading like discipline and emotional control,”.
Dany Mawas
How to start online trading
There are those that are apprehensive about starting online trading, due to the associated financial risk. To put them at ease, Mawas notes that while fine-tuning trading skills comes with experience, the best way to start is to open a demo account with one of the many online trading partners available today.
“A demo account is a simulation account that provides users with the opportunity to place trades and to become accustomed to how markets move,” he says.
Additionally, some online trading brokerages provide bonus incentives to boost traders initial deposit and give them a better platform to start on. With INFINOX, traders are only required to deposit as little as US $50 and will, in turn, receive an additional US $25 bonus. Meaning that 33% of their at risk capital is the bonus.
However, he points out that traders should also do their due diligence when selecting the brokerage to partner with and not only base their decision on the starting bonus. “This includes investigating where the brokerage is regulated, and ensuring it has a physical presence instead of merely being an online entity,” says Mawas.
Determine your plan of action
Mawas notes that although there are several game plans that beginner traders can adopt to gain profits on their investments, the old adage of ‘over-analysis leads to paralysis’ couldn’t be more true. “When developing a strategy it is vital to spend time researching and learning what works best. The more you perfect managing your risk, the better you become. If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to start simple and keep it simple.”
Mawas emphasises that trading is a humbling experience due to its binary outcome of either making the right or wrong decision. “As such, it is important for traders to have emotional control and the willingness to learn from their trading mistakes.”
Being emotionally invested can be detrimental to success, he adds. “Often, when the market dips, traders will make the emotional decision to continue trading in the hopes that they recover quickly, which often doesn’t happen. It’s imperative to assess each situation for what it is and to make the most informed decision.”
Why trading is more accessible
Current affairs such as COVID-19, the U.S election, and Brexit have prompted people to stay more up-to-date with current news, says Mawas. “This is important as the outcomes of these events have an effect on the markets. Nowadays people are more clued up than they think they are when it comes to knowing what is happening and what could impact their trading. This knowledge makes trading more accessible for those that wish to start.”
He also states that the internet is full of useful information for new traders to digest and that websites such as IX Intel offers manuals and how-to guides to help traders learn the basics of a successful trading career.
Mawas points out that the rise of social trading has also increased accessibility for beginner traders. “Social trading apps such as IX Social, allows users to access all the financial markets at their fingertips with the added bonus of tapping into other traders’ knowledge. Users can auto-copy top traders and receive the same results that they do.”
“Today, online trading is an easily accessible journey, and anyone can be successful if they use the right tools and spend time developing the necessary skills and acumen,” concludes Mawas.
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Surface Book 3 is now officially available in South Africa and will retail at R37,999 for the least configuration. The highest configuration of 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage retails at R52,999. Consumers will be able to buy the device from Microsoft Surface authorized partner Incredible Connection stores.
The device comes in 13 and 15-inch display sizes with up to 512GB storage. It is powered by a 10th generation Intel quad-core processor and dedicated NVIDIA GeForce graphics. What Microsoft did with the device is to maintain the outlook of the Surface Book 2 but upgrade every internal aspect with the latest tech.
Watch the video below and check out the design and make of the Surface Book 3.
Microsoft announced the Book 3 in May 2020 and they went on sale in other markets in June. They also became available in the United Arab Emirates market in September 2020. So for the South African market, they are arriving almost a year later.
Interestingly, the devices are currently out of stock on the Incredible Connection online store with no details on when to expect new stock.
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