Central University of Technology, South Africa, is introducing an Artificial Intelligence university programme powered by Microsoft.
To firstly skill employees with the in-demand skill and secondly address the demand for the skill in the province and South Africa in general.
The Artificial Intelligence university programme is developed by Microsoft and will be delivered by Microsoft Partner Gijima. The initiative is also in partnership with the Free State Provincial Government.
It will comprise of a 12-month blended learning model of self-study, online learning, classroom instructor-led training and a flipped classroom. The program will include; Mentorship and coaching by industry experts, Business skills, Microsoft Azure AI Associate Certification, Flipped Classroom, Guest Lecturers, Career days, Examination and Certification.
The program is designed to pass on skills employers value and need. By teaching graduates with limited or no work experience to explore, transform, model, and visualise data. As well as to create the next generation of intelligent solutions.
The collaborative nature of the Artificial Intelligence university Programme will unlock the value of AI and the role it will play in workplaces of the future says Microsoft South Africa Managing Director, Lillian Barnard.
By bringing together private and public sector partners, students, facilitators, mentors, coaches, and industry experts, the programme will enable the development of critical AI skills that will help our young people become more work-ready and employable, as well as help organizations, adapt to the ever-changing demands of the world of work.
Lillian Barnard
The training and certification program started on the 3rd of July 2020 with the Innovation Services of CUT (CUTis) and the Free State Provincial Government. The program will become available to the general public for enrolment from 2021.
A mobile-based medical application dubbed RemD (Remote Doctor) emerged as the winner of the Game of Learners (GOL) competition sponsored by Microsoft’s Africa Development Center (ADC). The mobile application was developed by five students drawn from Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Multimedia University of Kenya, Strathmore University and Mt. Kenya University.
The Game of Learners hackathon was to demonstrate the application of technology in developing e-health systems. That will enable patients to access normal medical services remotely.
Project RemD app was developed by five students namely Daniel Katungi (Mt. Kenya University), Sandra Makena (Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Joshua Melita (Strathmore University), Cyndrella Wafula of Multimedia University and led by Microsoft Student Ambassador Joshua Ndemenge (Dedan Kimathi University)
RemD uses technology to avail a set of tools and services that aim to bring health care services to a user or an organization. Through the app, a user requests for consultation services selecting whether they would like consultation with either a general physician, a psychiatrist, or a paediatrician. They then receive a message from the bot to begin triage where all the symptoms are recorded. After the triage, the bot sends all the information recorded to the doctor on the App. The doctor continues the conversation with a user via SMS. If the doctor deems it necessary, an in-person appointment can be set up.
“Any user seeking medical services can access our services through the mobile app or the USSD App. While the doctor on the other end can interact with these users using the windows app,” explains the RemD team leader, Joshua Ndemenge.
The African Development Center Managing Director Jack Ngare congratulated all the 25 participating students noting that some of the projects presented had big potential for commercialisation and Microsoft was willing to support them achieve that dream.
Apart from RemD, the other projects submitted include Tribore, MediChap, Mizizi and Motion, all showcasing various solutions to avail healthcare solutions via different technology platforms.
“While access to healthcare has been a key concern in Africa for ages, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the impetus to discover new technology solutions that will enable health providers handle an influx of people who get sick. It is encouraging to see the young generation and innovators harnessing the technology they have access to in developing solutions for the industry,” said Jack Ngare, the Africa Development Center Managing Director at the end of the competition.
He added, “We are keen at growing your skills and I will really be proud to see some of you that has participated in the Game of Learners joining one of the engineering teams at Microsoft.”
In addition, Microsoft Research is running a programme called HealthNext that seeks to discover some of the new sustainable methods of offering healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa and India and as such would be following up on some of the projects submitted to see how they can be scaled to the next level, Ngare said.
The Game of Learners hackathon, which kicked off in June, is aimed to empower the students to develop impactful solutions that can help address some of Africa’s and the world’s challenges. It is structured as a 5-week virtual hackathon comprised of weekly sprints where, at the end of the 5th week, all participating teams submit their final projects for judging. There were volunteers from ADC and Microsoft Global Sales and Marketing departments to train, coach the students throughout the 5-week engagement and judge each team’s final project submission.
To ensure that all participants had required tools to participate, every participant received:
Solar panel with battery and inverter
MiFi device loaded with data bundles
LinkedIn Learning vouchers
Azure Fundamentals exam vouchers
DevOps and agile practices training
1-year Azure credits
Digital certificate and digital badge for participation
Besides having the winning team featured on the ADC site along with announcements on social media, each standing member of the winning team will be rewarded with:
Additional 1-year Azure credits
Additional 1-year LinkedIn Learning vouchers
Digital certificate and digital badge for winning
1:1 mentorship from preferred Microsoft professionals
“We are so keen on enabling the next generation of great engineers from Africa and innovators that will not only benefit Microsoft, but the entire ecosystem as well,” Ngare said.
Microsoft announces a new Africa Research Institute (MARI) as its latest investment on the continent.
The Microsoft Africa Research Institute according to the company will focus on foundational research to improve productivity in areas such as work, health and society.
Microsoft notes that MARI’s mission is to understand how technologies such as cloud and AI help to solve local challenges. As well as how this understanding can be used to influence product creation and unearthing opportunities.
“I am excited to see what we can achieve with this new project, around new ways of work, social development, financial inclusion, and economic growth in Africa, shares MARI director, Jacki O’Neill. We hope to not only help solve many challenges Africa is facing but address global challenges as well,” she concludes.
MARI will integrate foundational research with product development shares the company. By bringing together researchers, engineers, designers, local academic institutions and the community to build talent and encourage a two-way flow of ideas.
We are seeing some really fantastic momentum in our work at the Microsoft Africa Development Center (ADC). And this new research institute will help us partner to solve local and global challenges, says Jack Ngare, managing director, Microsoft Africa Development Centre in Kenya.
“We are very focused on how innovative cloud technology is driving the future development of the continent. The work this team is seeking to do align closely with our overall goals for the ADC,” he continues.
Some of these software engineers took to social media to share the one-year anniversary package they received from Microsoft. Check out some of the posts below. Thereafter we will look at how far the company has come on its journey with the continent.
Africa is a unique opportunity … we are opening these development centers … where you see people who are very qualified for the kind of work we do
Phil Spencer, executive sponsor of the Microsoft ADC
Microsoft in Africa
Microsoft has been operating in Africa for the past thirty years. Having local offices in Senegal, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt. With South Africa hosting the oldest Microsoft offices in Africa.
However, this has mainly been on the sales side of the business. Providing consumers and organizations, mostly governmental ones with various services. The closest you could come to Microsoft workers in Africa were either through partner organizations or Microsoft employees acting as technical account managers who implement, onboard and deploy Microsoft services for customers and clients.
The launch event came off on the backdrop of a lot of backlash to self-professed Africa’s biggest online e-commerce site Jumia. The CEO had claimed a lack of local software engineering talent. Microsoft shared it believed in the growing local talent and that it was time to tap into that pool.
Our new Microsoft Africa Development Center will be at the forefront of building innovative solutions that benefit Africa − and the entire world. https://t.co/DlIrdkfMaF
Phil Spencer, Microsoft corporate vice president and executive sponsor of the Africa Development Center, and Michael Fortin, corporate vice president at Microsoft and the lead in establishing the first ADC engineering team in Nairobi, led the pomp and pageant opening ceremonies in Nairobi, Kenya and were joined by Microsoft Technical Fellow, Alex Kipman, for the Lagos launch event.
The Nairobi Microsoft Africa Development Center site software engineers contribute to building Windows and Office 365 products and services. Whilst the Lagos site software engineers contribute to building Microsoft Azure services that power new Augmented Reality experiences.
At the launch events, Microsoft executives shared the company was going to hire about five hundred software engineers by 2023, across both center sites. With plans to hire 100 software engineers by the end of 2019.
We reached out to Microsoft for the latest updates on the Microsoft Africa development centers and haven’t gotten any feedback as at publishing this. We will bring you updates when Microsoft responds.
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service on AWS that makes it easy to run Kubernetes without needing to install, operate, and maintain your own Kubernetes control plane or worker nodes.
Here are four benefits of using Amazon EKS
Highly Secure EKS automatically applies the latest security patches to your cluster control plane.
Multiple Availability Zones EKS auto-detects and replaces unhealthy control plane nodes and provides on-demand, zero downtime upgrades and patching.
Serverless Compute EKS supports AWS Fargate to remove the need to provision and manage servers, improving security through application isolation by design.
Built with the Community AWS actively works with the Kubernetes community, including making contributions to the Kubernetes code base helping you take advantage of AWS services.
Amazon EKS also supports adding Windows nodes as worker nodes and scheduling Windows containers. EKS supports running Windows worker nodes alongside Linux worker nodes. Allowing you to use the same cluster for managing applications on either operating system.
In terms of pricing, Amazon says you pay $0.10/hour for each Amazon EKS cluster you create. The service is also available in all AWS regions.
Microsoft Teams and Genesys Cloud, are now fully integrated, giving employees a more connected, intuitive and productive experience.
As a result, contact centre agents can collaborate with any employee. Using Microsoft Teams so they can resolve customer issues faster and deliver better service.
Genesys Cloud and Teams make collaboration easy for contact centres
Today, employees of contact centres work in several different systems across multiple devices, constantly toggling back and forth. This adds inefficiency and friction, stifling collaboration efforts and making it more time consuming and cumbersome to serve customers. Together, the integrated solutions address these challenges and enable employees to call Teams users throughout their organisation, all from within Genesys Cloud.
Bridging the gap between the front and back office
When agents need to consult with a subject matter expert outside of the contact centre, they can use the integrated directory, search and presence features to find the Teams user with the right expertise from within their Genesys Cloud desktop. They can determine availability and collaborate in real time with a single click.
For example, if a customer asks a question about a loan for a new holiday home while on a support call, an agent can quickly find an available mortgage specialist to help address the issue during the interaction. This facilitates teamwork, knowledge sharing and results in faster resolution for customers.
“We are thrilled to add yet another element to our long-standing partnership with Microsoft. Which marks an important step forward in helping our customers deliver on the promise of Experience as a Service“. Shares Olivier Jouve, executive vice president and general manager, Genesys Cloud.
“With more than 75 million daily active users, Microsoft Teams is a predominant unified communications and productivity tool for thousands of enterprise organisations. By integrating our platform with Teams, employees can draw upon expertise from anywhere in the organisation so they can provide experiences tailored for every customer.”
Mike Ammerlaan, Director of Microsoft 365 Ecosystem marketing at Microsoft said, “More organisations recognize that employees throughout the business contribute to outstanding customer experiences – not just those in the contact centre. The Genesys Cloud and Microsoft Teams integration helps ensure employees are equipped with the right tools to collaborate with colleagues across the enterprise while benefitting from features like advanced routing, call recording and interaction analytics to deliver consistent service.”
