Dynamics 365 Business Central the Microsoft business management solution for small and mid-sized organizations (SMBs) is coming to Africa and the Middle East. The solution will launch in Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Lebanon over this month.
Dynamics 365 Business Central lets SMBs automate and streamline their business operations. By connecting their financials, sales, services, shipping, manufacturing, project management, operations and more to improve customer interactions.
Maher Al-Khaiyat, Regional Business Applications Director for Microsoft MEA Emerging Markets, says what businesses get with Business Central is an end-to-end view of their operations. With built-in intelligence when and where they need it. He notes that the application is easy to tailor and extend to meet any unique business or industry-specific needs.
“With digital transformation now a necessity, SMBs are seeking cost-effective, streamlined systems that will make their transition seamless. Multiple, disconnected systems are now easily combined under one secure, centralised application. Using Dynamics 365 Business Central, efficiency is boosted through automated tasks and workflows. All from within familiar Office tools like Outlook, Word, and Excel.”
Maher Al-Khaiyat
The new solution will launch in Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Lebanon over this month AL-Khaiyat adds.
Business Central is easy to integrate with applications like payroll, banking apps, or custom APIs. It has the same consistent and secure experience across all devices no matter where teams are accessing the application from.
SMEs will be able to deploy Dynamics 365 Business Central in either the cloud, on-premise, or with a hybrid approach. No matter the requirements for data residency, compliance, or security, companies can run their business wherever and however needed.
Business Central was previously known as Dynamics NAV. The solution is now a SaaS and comes in the Dynamics 365 suite.
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Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) is collaborating with pricing and rebate management experts Flintfox, and Microsoft to modernise how it uses technology. This is part of an ongoing digital transformation programme at its bottling plants. The collaboration will help the bottling giant retire legacy solutions, to better manage pricing and overcome existing challenges at all stages of the supply chain.
The collaboration between Microsoft and Flintfox helps CCBA to accelerate its digital transformation journey, via seamless digital systems that enable the entire business to operate as one.
“Flintfox’s Trade Revenue Management and RMx pricing extended the capabilities of our Finance and Operations solutions. Enabling CCBA’s digital transformation“, notes Gavin Holme, consulting services director at Microsoft South Africa. “With Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, and Azure, CCBA will achieve their goal to unify operations and intelligently adjust processes in real-time. He adds.”
Trade Revenue Management and the RMx pricing engine provide CCBA with the ability to manage advanced pricing and promotions, reduce operating costs and monitor margins. By extending the capability of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and integrating with existing e-commerce and sales force automation platforms, Flintfox will enable real-time hyper-speed pricing and help deliver accurate pricing across the supply chain.
“It’s an exciting time to be working with CCBA, as they bring their digital transformation vision to life via Microsoft Dynamics 365 and set out on a path of accelerated growth“, says Flintfox EMEA Director Mark Conway. He adds, “Our intelligent solutions will reduce operating costs, create productivity gains and future-proof operations. What’s more, we will provide real-time pricing accuracy across CCBA’s channels and deliver significant, measurable ROI to the business.”
Coca-Cola Beverages Africa Chief Information Officer Joshua Motsuenyane notes: “Because CCBA was born out of a merger of different companies, there are a number of infrastructure redundancies, supply duplications, and lines of accountability that were blurred. We needed to perfect the overall business’ ability to operate as one and improve pricing transparency and visibility. Flintfox and Microsoft helped us strategize how to better manage advanced pricing, promotion management, and complex supply chain pricing, as well as provide a roadmap for the future. This integration with Flintfox and Microsoft modernizes the way we use technology across our entire IT landscape and allows us to completely retire legacy systems“.
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Khushi Gupta, Jeet Gohil, Dharmik Karania and Abdihamid Ali are computer science final year students of United States International University – Africa (USIS), Kenya. REWBA comes from their innovation name Remote Well Baby.
Team REWEBA entered into the competition under the healthcare category with an IoT-based early warning system for babies. Their innovation remotely monitors infant parameters during regular post-natal screening. It then sends measurements to doctors remotely, allowing for immediate interventions saving infants from fatal diseases and reducing infant mortality rates.
Microsoft organizes the developer competition each year for students aged 16 years and above. The student innovators, use their passion and purpose to tackle local social issues with technology. Winning a cash amount to help them to keep working on their project, as well as other prizes. The competition starts from the national or online level through the regional and then World Championship event.
Africa teams at the Imagine Cup
Throughout the history of the competition, student teams from various African countries have participated at the Europe Middle East and Africa regional level. With just a handful making it to the world championship level. Unfortunately, none has gone on to win the competition.
Last year, Team Knights from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya and Team RedWalls from Tunisia National Institute of Applied Science and Technology made it to the World Finals. In 2019, team Athena-IO, Tunisia and iCropal, Kenya joined 9 others from Europe as 12 EMEA Regional Finalist. Due to changes in the competition that year second-place team Athena-IO didn’t get to present at the World Finals.
Team iCropal, Kenya on the left
Team E-Parkfrom Morocco qualified through the Middle East and Africa competition held in Lebanon in 2017. Competing as the only team from Africa against 54 teams from around the globe at the finals. In 2016 four student teams from Nigeria, South Africa and Tunisia qualified to represent Africa at the Imagine Cup Finals in Seattle. During this period in the competition history, winners at the national level got direct entries to the World Championship.
The wait has been long but it is finally here. Student teams making it to the World Championship successively these past few years show how far they have come.
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After weeks of gruelling teamwork, Microsoft announces team Bloom as winners of the second season of its Africa Development Center (ADC) Game of Learners Virtual Hackathon. Team kaizen came in second place and Team Tulearn came in third to complete the winning three teams.
Season 2 of the Microsoft ADC Game of Learners virtual hackathon competition involved 60 undergraduate students from Nigeria and Kenya. With the teams taking on the challenge of solving the education accessibility problems in Africa using technology. The 12 teams had a diversity and gender balance of 30 females and males.
Team Bloom led by Bethany Jepchumba from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, designed the winning solution Bloom-Learn.
The solution features a digital platform with capabilities to link students and teachers across Africa. Teachers are able to upload classes, create one-on-one sessions with students, as well as communicate with students on each course via a chat forum. Students can use a booking session to connect with teachers. Bloom-Learn is built with Microsoft’s Azure App Service, Power platform and Microsoft 365.
The other Team Bloom members include Joy Kathure (Dedan Kimathi University, Kenya), Festus Idowu (Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria), Fortune Adekogbe (University of Lagos, Nigeria) and Afandi Indiatsi (Strathmore University, Kenya).
Jack Ngare, Microsoft ADC Kenya Managing Director, notes that Microsoft is committed to supporting these young innovators to develop some of their ideas into viable solutions.
Team Bloom gets the winning trophy and each member will receive a smartphone. They also get one-year Azure credits and one year LinkedIn Learning vouchers. Azure Developer exam voucher, digital certificate, digital badge, a swag bag, and one-on-one mentorship from preferred professionals for winning.
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More than 1000 students from 126 universities across Africa have participated in the UmojaHack Africa 2021 virtual machine learning hackathon. The hackathon organized by Zindi took place on the weekend of 27-28 March.
1150 Students from 21 African countries joined the event participating in three different machine learning challenges. They represent Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Data science students from 9 African countries won a total competition price of more than $10000 USD in prizes. 8500 submissions were made to solve three real-world machine learning challenges on Zindi.
A financial resilience prediction challenge, a logistics challenge for African B2B service provider Sendy, and a computational biology challenge using the DeepChain™ platform developed by InstaDeep.
The winning solutions developed by Zindi data science users will be shared with these organisations and deployed in real-world applications.
In winning second place in the Sendy Delivery Rider Response Challenge, Tony Mipawa, a data science student from the University of Dodoma, Tanzania, epitomised the spirit of Zindi and of UmojaHack. A year ago, Tony was a data science novice until he participated in Zindi’s first-ever Mentorship Programme in 2020. He has grown in leaps and bounds since then. As evidenced by his prize-winning submission in this hackathon, less than a year later.
“I’m very happy with the outcome,” Tony said at the awards ceremony. “My advice is, whenever there is an opportunity to learn, you should take it. Learning is all about passion; whenever there is an opportunity to learn, put your whole effort into it, do it well. Try to learn from anyone you meet. I would like to thank Zindi for what that mentorship programme gave me.”
Some of the leading names in the global and African tech, AI and financial sectors made UmojaHack Africa 2021 possible. These include InstaDeep, Standard Bank Group, Microsoft, DeepMind, NVIDIA, and Old Mutual. They were integral in making the event a success. By offering financial and professional development prizes, contributing their expertise and excitement to the event, and supporting UmojaHack Africa 2021 through their own channels.
“We are incredibly excited about this event spanning over 100 African universities and helping thousands of African students leverage their data science and AI skills to solve African problems,” says Chris Lwanga, Principal Director for Software Partnerships at Microsoft. “At Microsoft, we believe in empowering every organisation and person to do more.”
“Standard Bank is deeply invested in funding and implementing critical data science skills development programmes, such as Zindi’s UmojaHack Africa 2021 hackathon, to position Africa as a serious competitor in the world’s rapidly emerging data-driven sector,” says Adrian Vermooten, Chief Innovation Officer, Standard Bank Group.
“We are delighted to support UmojaHack Africa again, an incredible initiative close to our hearts. Seeing students from more than 120 universities come together to collaborate on real-world machine learning challenges is truly inspiring,” says Karim Beguir, Co-Founder and CEO of InstaDeep. “This is, in our opinion, the best way to accelerate AI growth on the continent. Hackathons like UmojaHack bring us one step closer to achieving InstaDeep’s mission: building an AI-first world that benefits everyone.”
According to Celina Lee, CEO of Zindi, “UmojaHack Africa has proven to be a game-changing event, especially when so many young people have been impacted by the global pandemic. This is a chance for students from across the continent to come together to learn, compete, and have fun. UmojaHack is about building skills, creating new machine learning applications to solve problems that really matter while forging new connections among the students as well as with industry. We are incredibly excited to see what the students come up with in just one weekend.”
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