UPDATE: Microsoft launches Africa Development sites in Lagos and Nairobi.
Microsoft corporation marks yet another milestone of investments and operations in Africa. In an event later today the global technology company will announce its first Development Centre in Africa. Its seventh globally. The Africa Development Centre will have two initial sites set to be located in Nigeria and Kenya. The global technology giant says it will be a long term investment in the region.
Yesterday, top Microsoft executives paid a courtesy call on the President of Kenya. Where they shared details of the project with the president. The executives shared that Microsoft plans to invest a combined expected investment of US $100 million over the first five years of operation.
Microsoft says through the Africa Development Centre it intends to invest in more cutting-edge solutions suitable for the region and the rest of the world.
Stay with us as we bring you more details about the Africa Development Centre launch event in Nairobi. What are you thoughts on this, share them with us.
Microsoft delegation meets with President Kenyatta
Microsoft corporation executives have met with Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta ahead of the scheduled Africa Development Centre launch event in Nairobi, Kenya. The visit was to formally inform the president of the scheduled launch project in Kenya.
Microsoft Country General Manager East and Southern Africa, Sebuh Haileleul led the executives who met the Kenyan president. They include Executive Vice President, Gaming at Microsoft, Phil Spencer, Corporate Vice President, Gaming Partnerships & Business Development, Sarah Bond and Corporate Vice President, Mike Fortin.
During the discussions with the president, Phil spencer shared that “the new development sites carry great potential for job creation, talent development and technology transfer among Africa’s youth. Especially in countries with good ICT literacy ratings such as Kenya.” The African Development Centre sites he said “will contribute to Microsoft’s interests across global businesses such as Office, Azure, Windows among others.”
President Uhuru Kenyatta on the other hand said “the new initiatives by Microsoft is in line with the government’s development agenda.” He also shared that he was “keen to ensure the country has a technologically empowered and capable youth ready for the global job market.”
Microsoft will officially launch the Africa Development Center in Nairobi, Kenya tomorrow and we will bring you more details.
Update: Microsoft announces Africa Development Center sites in Kenya and Nigeria
In a teaser post on Microsoft’s social pages, the company shared “Something great is coming to Nairobi, Kenya! and Something great is coming to Lagos, Nigeria!, Watch this space to learn more“. The big announcements are scheduled to be made on May 14th in Nairobi Kenya and the 17th in Lagos Nigeria.
In July 2018 Microsoft, Facebook and The Rockefeller Foundation partnered with the African Development Bank to announce Coding for Employment. An initiative seeking to bridge the digital skills divide among African youths.
To kick start the program and to celebrate women’s month Microsoft and the African Development Bank(AfDB) have started a month long all-female ICT and digital skills bootcamp on two campuses(Centres of Excellence) in Nigeria. Gombe State University and Covenant University located in Gombe and Ogun States respectively.
“The all-female cohort of the Coding for Employment Program is to increase the number of female coders, accelerate gender equality and empowerment for women and girls in the digital era“. The program “aspires that the all-female cohort will spark an interest in more girls and young women to pursue STEM. That’s encourage them to pursue realizations in STEM related fields“.
The ADB says “the programme acts as an entry point for young female participants who are keen to find jobs within the growing ICT sector. At the end of the course, participants may continue to a more advanced level or simply use their new skills to enhance their job searches.”
AfDB program Task Manager Coding For Employment, Uyoyo Edosio spoke at the launch of the pilot scheme at the Covenant University. She said “In the next 10 years, AfDB will be working at increasing ICT Centres of Excellence in the continent. Creating over 1.9 million jobs. We are building a whole value chain from this launch”
160 young women have ben selected to participate in the month-long all-female coding class in Nigeria.
The partnership between Microsoft and the African Development Bank will continue to focus on increasing the participation of underserved youth and women while equipping youth across Africa with the skills needed to fill jobs now and in the future,” – Ghada Khalifa, Director of Philanthropies for the Middle East and Africa
Under the program so far Microsoft and the AfDB have trained 555 participants in a 3 day Hour of Code campaign. Microsoft has also trained 80 instructors in Nigeria and 60 in Kenya to deliver the basic ICT skills material. The Afbd will be launching an aggregated online training and talent portal with content from LinkedIn Learning.
The coding for employment program, still on a pilot scheme will be rolled out at 14 centres of excellence across Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Ivory Coast and Senegal.
Microsoft opens up its student scholarship program globally. Students in Nigeria can now apply for a Microsoft Tuition Scholarship.
The Microsoft scholarship program is an initiative to encourage students to pursue computer science and related STEM disciplines. Microsoft awards this to students who demonstrate passion for technology, academic excellence and leadership. The award was previously opened to university students in United States, Canada or Mexico.
The scholarship page says;
Welcome to the Microsoft Tuition Scholarship application page! Each year Microsoft awards Tuition Scholarships designed to empower the students that study Computer Science and related STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) disciplines. We look forward to reviewing your application.
Note: To be eligible for the scholarship, you must be enrolled full time in a bachelor’s degree program at a four year university at the time you submit the application.
If this is an opportunity you’ve been looking for, click to apply and submit your application.
Microsoft is increasing its investments on African soil. It is launching two development centers in Africa. With offices in Kenya and Nigeria. Early this month Microsoft’s planned Africa datacenters became a reality and went live in South Africa. Last year in partnership with Techno Brain Limited Microsoft opened Africa’s first Software Testing Centre in Kenya. It also opened its first Africa customer service support center in Lagos, Nigeria in partnership with Tek Experts.
The latest announcement was highlighted by Alex Kipman, Microsoft’s technical fellow for AI and Mixed Reality. Alex is known as the man behind Microsoft HoloLens. A software engineering job posting on Microsoft’s career page gives more details about this.
The role description says Microsoft is launching a “Cognition Africa engineering team to build Mixed Reality Cloud Services”. And asks software engineers who meet the qualifications to apply.
Here’s what the job posting tells us about the Mixed reality and AI engineering office in Lagos.
“We are launching a Cognition Africa engineering team to build Mixed Reality Cloud Services that bring those technologies to a wider range of devices. Do you want to join us on this journey? We are offering opportunities for passionate Software Engineers to help us build the team and suite of cloud services which bring these capabilities to the cloud“.
Excited to share that our team is opening an engineering office in Africa to build #MixedReality and #AI. We are going to be based in Lagos, Nigeria. You can apply for roles here: https://t.co/wFJzUbIl3k … looking forward to my first visit soon [)-)
Alex Kipman in his tweet also says “looking forward to my first visit soon“. I want to believe we might have a HoloLens 2 showcase event in town soon. Microsoft unveiled the HoloLens 2 recently at the 2019 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
