Microsoft names Kunle Awosika as the new Managing Director of the Africa Transformation Office (ATO) in a new reorganization to optimize its operations in Africa to scale impact. He succeeds Wael Elkabbany, who now heads Microsoft’s new Africa Regional Cluster (ARC) subsidiary. Kunle will lead the ATO subsidiary with a focus on driving digital transformation initiatives across the continent.
“I am passionate about the incredible potential Africa has to become a truly connected continent that exports digital goods and services to the rest of the world. I am delighted to have the opportunity to meaningfully impact this growth and help unlock the continent’s full digital potential,” said Kunle.
Kunle has over 22 years of experience working in multiple countries across the continent. He also has a deep understanding and passion for Africa’s growth. He has held several positions at Microsoft, including director of Enterprise Business, Country Manager Microsoft Kenya, as well as director of Small and Medium Corporates, Emerging Markets. Kunle Awosika was also one of three pioneer team members when Microsoft opened its Nigeria office.
He is credited with the introduction of different transformational technology opportunities to a wide range of organizations in both the public and private sectors, enabling them to unlock significant value. Kunle will bring this deep experience in multiple African markets to the new role.
While welcoming him to the new role, Elkabbany said: “With his multifaceted experience of the continent and deep understanding of transformative technology, Kunle Awosika is ideally placed to lead the strategy, investments, and initiatives of Microsoft’s transformation plans for the African continent.”
“I look forward to playing a role in unlocking Africa’s potential as the ATO develops and steers strategic partnerships with governments, international organizations, and partners to accelerate digital transformation agendas and fuel a knowledge-based economy,” Kunle added.
Microsoft Africa Transformation Office
Launched in 2021, the ATO supersedes the continent-wide multi-million dollar Microsoft 4Afrika investment project launched in 2012. In simple terms, the Microsoft ATO is Microsoft’s move to scale out what it did with 4Afrika across the continent. It focuses on enabling growth and fuelling investment in four essential development areas. – Digital infrastructure, skilling, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and start-ups. –
Now, we have a responsibility to play a different role that drives impact at scale, says Wanja Gitonga, Microsoft ATO Communications lead. Reaching millions of Africans and accelerating Africa’s digital transformation to help deliver long-lasting African economic prosperity through digital technologies. The ATO will play an enabling role to accelerate and scale up existing programs within Microsoft, she adds.
Wanja notes that Microsoft is committed to rethinking how and why it develops digital solutions and strategies to better serve the needs of Africa. Through large-scale digital partnerships and initiatives across infrastructure, skilling, SMEs, and startups, we hope to impact the lives of millions of Africans and foster economic prosperity through digital technologies.
Microsoft understands that it cannot achieve these ambitious goals alone. Saying, strategic partnerships with governments, international organizations, multinationals, and African enterprises will accelerate investments in Africa and increase the continent’s export of digital services.
Since its inception, Microsoft Africa Transformation Office has spearheaded a number of initiatives and strategic partnerships across Africa. It announced the launch of Microsoft Startups Founders Hub in Africa and new partnerships with accelerators and incubators to provide startups with access to markets, technical skills, and funding to accelerate the growth of 10,000 African startups over the next five years.
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We bring you a list of the 2022 Microsoft Partner of the year country award winners from across Africa. The announcement comes ahead of Microsoft Inspire 2022 where Microsoft will celebrate exemplary achievements from across its global partner ecosystem. The 2022 Microsoft Inspire partner event is set to take place July 19-20 as a free global digital event.
Microsoft uses the partner award to recognize outstanding partner accomplishments within its community. Highlighting organizations building new and innovative solutions for their customers using Microsoft technologies. This year, the company received over three thousand nine hundred entries from one hundred and twenty-six countries. Across categories including, partner competencies, cloud-to-edge technologies, entrepreneurial spirit and social impact.
Below are Microsoft Partner Africa winners from the country and region category.
At Microsoft, we believe our partners make more possible. That’s why we recognize exceptional partner contributions.
2022 Microsoft Partner Africa award winners – country category
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Microsoft is promising its commitment to working with both the private and public sectors to accelerate digital transformation in African agriculture in order to increase food security for the continent.
Speaking during a virtual roundtable panel discussion on the topic, Microsoft Kenya Acting Country Manager Kunle Awosika said the organisation is committed to continuing investing in agritech on the continent, with the goal of developing agritech that enables data-driven, precise and connected farming that optimises yields, boosts farm productivity and increases profitability.
“We understand that these important issues will not be solved by one company, but through partnerships with the private sector and our partners in government for maximum impact and benefit to the farmers of Africa,” he said.
Speaking at the same forum, ATO Coordinator, Agriculture Transformation Office, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives Thule Lenneiye, said: “Through partnerships such as the one with Microsoft, we can offer our smallholder farmers valuable services that help them modernize and digitize age-old farming practices, increasing productivity and boosting food security for our communities and country.”
One way in which agritech changes the face of agriculture is through democratising information. In partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Microsoft is investing in the Kenyan National Agriculture Platform as a key initiative to drive digitalization in agriculture. As part of this investment, a developer team based in Kenya has developed an Agri chatbot, which provides extension and advisory services to smallholder farmers using either feature phones or smartphones, via SMS, WhatsApp and Telegram.
The AgriBot provides a key platform that farmers can use to access all the relevant information from the Ministry of Agriculture and other government institutions, as well as services from the private sector. These services are invaluable to the over 400,000 farmers already on the platform who would otherwise not have access to such a resource.
Olatomiwa Williams, Microsoft Country Manager Nigeria and Ghana speaking at the forum said the organization is working with stakeholders to identify and develop sustainable and inclusive digital solutions for agro-products and services that seamlessly connect farmers, customers and other stakeholders in the ecosystem. Importantly to improve the economic situation of farmers in Nigeria.
Microsoft also recently announced that it is extending its partnership with the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The initial collaboration between the two organizations started in 2019 when Microsoft and AGRA co-created the AgriBot as a digital solution for localized extension and advisory services for smallholder farmers.
The new phase of the relationship will promote digital innovation and technology as an enabler to connect the agriculture ecosystems, sustainably integrating stakeholders in the service of strategic value chains.
“Our partnership with AGRA forms part of Microsoft’s ongoing investment in agritech across the continent as we support digital transformation in the sector. We’re excited to continue building locally relevant technology solutions that address the local farmers’ needs and deliver meaningful impact,” added Kunle.
On his part, John Macharia, AGRA Kenya Country Manager, said: “At AGRA, we realized early on that digital innovation is critical in advancing food security and poverty eradication in Africa. Our partnership with Microsoft will directly support governments, SMEs and farmers, by bringing the digital tools needed to build resilient food systems.”
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I’ve always wanted to improve my skills as a developer. I knew that the best people are at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook. I’ve always wanted the kinds of challenges they represent. I always wanted to work with people who would wow me and teach me at the same time. When I heard that Microsoft had come to Kenya, I knew that “this is my chance”.
This is the story of George Maina, a Software Engineer at the Microsoft Africa Development Center (ADC-East) located in Nairobi, Kenya. He is one of the first hires of Microsoft and works on the Identity and Network Access team in Kenya.
Even though the ADC was an experiment the success of George’s team in the early days will go on to help Microsoft make investing more in the ADC an easy decision. The ADC has grown from 21 employees in three teams to over 400 in more than eight teams in three years. With Microsoft launching a 27 million dollar office facility to house the software engineers.
Geroge works for the Microsoft Graph onboarding team, which is the third team to be formed at the ADC. “Right now, we’re four people, we help teams within Microsoft to onboard onto Graph and to manage their Graph deployments. … My role is to develop tooling to make sure we can automatically link their API when they publish it to our repo.”
I think we were the very first team to join Identity here, and we all came on the same day. There were then three teams at Microsoft’s Africa Development Center (ADC) in Nairobi. Each team had around seven people, making a total of 21. One team came aboard just a week before my team. At that time, it was not really clear where ADC was going. But it turned out really well. We’ve gotten our footing and have developed specialized areas. Several teams are now owners of certain operations within Microsoft. ADC has grown to around 400 just here in Kenya alone. That’s a testament to how well ADC has performed.
I remember when you came to visit, Igor, you said that you’d evaluate the operation after a few years, that it was an experiment. I remember going home that night thinking, wow, what happens if this fails?
I’ve learned so much. The last two years have blown my mind. I love working here and really love Microsoft. Microsoft offers so many opportunities everywhere.
George Maina
Igor Sakhnov, Microsoft Corporate vice president of Identity and Network Access Engineering, talks with software engineer George Maina about his entrepreneurial journey and the beginnings of the Microsoft ADC. Click to read the full conversation.
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Microsoft is officially launching the new home of its software engineers in Kenya. The Africa Development Centre (ADC East Africa) engineering team will now be based at Dunhill Towers, along Waiyaki Way, Nairobi. Having previously shared Microsoft’s office at the Oval. The ultra-modern office facility will co-locate with Microsoft’s newly launched The Garage, design, research, and innovation teams.
The ultra-modern ADC East Africa office space borrows heavily from Microsoft’s modern workplace design. Featuring solutions that reduce or prevent the emission of carbon into the atmosphere to meet the company’s target of becoming net carbon negative by 2030. The facility will use self-heating windows, a mini solar plant, and a water treatment facility to recycle and purify water. The eco-friendly office also optimizes space utilization, air conditioning, and lighting adjustments.
Kenya president, Uhuru Kenyatta was present at the event to unveil the plaque and officially launch the office facility. Other guests present include Joe Mucheru, the Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Innovation, and Youth Affairs. As well as Joy Chik, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Identity Division and Executive Sponsor of the Africa Development Center.
The facility will continue Microsoft’s efforts to train, equip and hire software engineers in Kenya and Africa. To contribute to the development of Microsoft products that are in use by over 1 billion devices, says ADC East Africa MD Jack Ngare.
Africa is such a young continent and Microsoft absolutely believes the future is here, notes Joy Chick, at the event. We invite all the young innovative entrepreneurs to help us collectively build technology for Africa, but more importantly for the world. This is just the beginning. We are excited about the opening of the ADC and what the future can bring, she adds.
Launched in May 2019, Microsoft says the Africa Development Center currently has about 570 full-time employees across both sites. In Nairobi, it has about 450 employees with plans to add another 50 before the year ends. Surpassing the company’s initial plan to hire 500 software engineers by the end of 2023. This number reflects roles across software engineering, machine learning, data science, market research, infrastructure, etc.
1/3 President Uhuru Kenyatta on Thursday evening presided over the official launch of the Microsoft Africa Development Centre (ADC) in Westlands, Nairobi City County. #ADCNairobiOfficepic.twitter.com/7JfcUhoCwn
Part of the festivities to kickoff the ADC Nairobi launch, we held a session with the developer community in Nairobi, where we demonstrated the plans that The Microsoft Garage has put in place to support the tech ecosystem 😊.#ADCNairobiLaunch#TheBigReset#MSFTGaragepic.twitter.com/PnB4dyoDai
— Microsoft Africa Development Center (@MicrosoftADC) March 24, 2022
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Microsoft is announcing the official opening of its new office facility located at 24 Glover Rd, Ikoyi, Lagos in Nigeria. The new office facility will house its Africa Development Center (ADC West Africa) software engineers and will be co-located with the newly launched Microsoft The Garage.
Initially launched in May 2019, the Microsoft ADC West Africa software engineering team have been working from the Microsoft Nigeria offices. They will now officially work from six floors out of the 14 storey Kings Tower building. The new ultra-modern office space according to ADC Managing Director, Gafar Lawal, cost Microsoft not less than $70 million. The facility has working space for software engineers and other Microsoft staff, conference spaces, a nursery and an innovation hub.
Microsoft says the facility will host various activities aimed at growing tech talent in the continent. As well as play a strategic role in nurturing innovation and helping startups to scale.
Present to mark the launch event of the new Microsoft office facility in Nigeria was Joy Chik, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Identity Division and Executive Sponsor of the Africa Development Center. Who noted the ADC was the natural next idea when Microsoft realised that Africa is the next frontier for global technology expansion.
The ADC West Africa software engineering team develops Microsoft Azure services that power new Augmented Reality experiences for Microsoft’s mixed-reality platform. Contributing to building Microsoft Azure’s Spatial Anchors and Mesh platform solutions.
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