Microsoft, Liquid Cloud to support African businesses with cloud services

Microsoft, Liquid Cloud to support African businesses with cloud services

Microsoft is announcing a partnership with Liquid Cloud through its Africa Transformation Office (ATO) to provide cloud services to businesses across the continent. Liquid Cloud and the Microsoft ATO will collaborate to deliver resilient cloud in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to meet regulatory and data residency requirements, address low latency workloads, strengthen resilience, and enable business continuity.

The hybrid cloud environment extends Azure capabilities enabling customers to create cloud-native applications faster with Azure platform and data services such as App Service, Functions, Logic Apps, Azure SQL Managed Instance, PostgreSQL database, and Azure machine learning. As a result, customers will be able to innovate anywhere and use the Azure platform to bring new solutions to life that solves today’s challenges, while creating the future.

Liquid Cloud Telecom

We witnessed an accelerated adoption of cloud technologies in Africa, and businesses are now reaping the benefits of their investment. Our customers are increasingly moving to hybrid work culture, meaning the demand for cloud-based services will only grow. Our partnership will enable us to build comprehensive and edge-based cloud capabilities that meet customer regulatory requirements and ensure that they deliver value to their customers,” said David Behr, CEO of Liquid Cloud and Cyber Security.

On his part, Wael El kabbany, General Manager, Africa Regional Cluster, Microsoft said: “Critical infrastructure enablers are needed to provide access to the cloud to accelerate digital transformation and the adoption of digital technologies. Working with Liquid Cloud, access to the local cloud will be available to more organizations and highly regulated industries across the continent. In addition, the hybrid cloud provides in-country resources that address data residency, latency, and storage requirements,

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Microsoft is hiring software engineers from African universities to USA and Canada

Microsoft is hiring software engineers from African universities to USA and Canada

As part of plans to showcase the talent pool in Africa, Microsoft through its University Recruiting program and Africans at Microsoft is hiring final-year students and recent university graduates from across Africa into full-time engineering roles at Microsoft. The Microsoft African University Recruitment Program for recent graduate engineers will provide successful candidates with relocation to the USA and Canada.

Interested persons who will like to apply should have recently graduated from the university or will be graduating by 2023. Here are the qualifications you will need to meet.

  • Open to relocating to USA or Canada
  • Pursuing or recently completed a bachelor’s or master’s degree in engineering, computer science, or related field.  
  • One year of programming experience in an object-oriented language (C, C#, C++, Java, Python).  
  • Ability to demonstrate an understanding of computer science fundamentals, including data structures and algorithms. 

Activities that will give you an edge include experience building software outside of the classroom environment like an internship, hackathon, or research project. As well as showing the ability to work in a team and effective time management.

USA and Canada Microsoft

Microsoft started the program in 2017 dubbed Africa to Redmond; Hack for Africa. For its first iteration, Microsoft University Recruiting and Africans at Microsoft selected five universities on the continent to recruit from. University of Nairobi (Kenya), University of Lagos (Nigeria), Ashesi University (Ghana), Makerere University (Uganda), and University of Cape Town (South Africa).

The Microsoft Team is organizing free virtual resume workshops to help interested persons prepare for the application process. Where they will provide information on Microsoft’s recruitment program, share tips on how to make your application stand out, and answer your questions. The free resume workshop will take place at different times depending on your country. Here are a few below:

Ghana – from 6 – 7:30 pm GMT on Saturday 20th August 2022. The link to join the session will be provided after you register, link: http://aka.ms/ghtomicrosoft.

Nigeria – from 7 pm WAT on Thursday 18th August 2022 via https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OdKrBDoOAeKX.

Kenya – from 6 – 7 pm EAT on 24th August 2022 via https://www.meetup.com/ms-ambassadors-ke/events/287900428/

During the workshop, Microsoft recruiters will share more on the recruitment process. But it usually takes place in three phases and will look something like this. It starts with an online coding challenge. A panel will then review the entries and select applicants for the next stage. The selected candidates will have an in-person or virtual interview. Finally, a successful candidate from the three steps will join Microsoft for a full-time position. The candidate will be assigned to an engineering team once they accept the offer.

Don’t forget to kindly share this opportunity with your friends or anyone this might help so they don’t miss out.

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Microsoft is hiring software engineers from Ghana to USA and Canada

Microsoft is hiring software engineers from Ghana to USA and Canada

Microsoft through its African University Recruitment Program is hiring final year students and recent graduates from Ghana for full-time software engineering roles and will be providing successful candidates with relocation to the United States and Canada.

Interested persons who will like to apply should have recently graduated from the university or will be graduating by 2023.

Here are the other qualifications you will need to meet.

  • Open to relocating to USA or Canada
  • Pursuing or recently completed a bachelor’s or master’s degree in engineering, computer science, or related field.  
  • One year of programming experience in an object-oriented language.  
  • Ability to demonstrate an understanding of computer science fundamentals, including data structures and algorithms. 
Microsoft is hiring Ivy Barley Microsoft Developers In Vogue
Ivy Barley joins Microsoft

To help interested persons prepare for the application process, the Microsoft Team is organizing a free virtual resume workshop. They will also provide information on Microsoft’s recruitment program, share tips on how to make your application stand out, and answer your questions.

The free resume workshop will take place from 6 – 7:30 pm GMT on Saturday 20th August 2022. The link to join the session will be provided after you register, link: http://aka.ms/ghtomicrosoft.

Don’t forget to kindly share this opportunity with your friends or anyone this might help so they don’t miss out.

If you have any questions about the event, feel free to contact Ivy Barley on Twitter.

Check out what’s new on our YouTube channel. Subscribe to follow for the latest videos and news in the ecosystem.

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PayAngel to innovate faster with the Microsoft Founders Hub opportunity

PayAngel to innovate faster with the Microsoft Founders Hub opportunity

PayInc Group Limited, trading as PayAngel is announcing its selection into the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub program. A Microsoft program that seeks to remove traditional barriers that startups face when building a company. PayAngel believes the program will help them innovate faster and accelerate their growth. The company offers remittance and payment solutions to the African Diaspora.

PayAngel Microsoft Founders hub

Microsoft Africa Transformation Office in March this year launched the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub in new initiatives to accelerate the growth of 10,000 African startups and fast-track investment in Africa’s start-up ecosystem. It is a new digital and all-inclusive platform that gives startups free access to Microsoft technology, tools, coaching, and support to build and scale their business. It also includes opportunities for the startups to sell to Microsoft’s corporate and enterprise customers.

Jones Amegbor, CEO of PayAngel, notes that the exclusive technology packages in the Hub will allow the company to innovate faster and accelerate its growth.

What this means to our existing and new customers is a more robust, secured and enhanced system, expansion to other territories and straight-through service delivery”.

Beyond access to technology, the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub program empowers young entrepreneurs to innovate and grow by connecting through their mentoring program. Which provides them with industry, business, and technical support to guide them through their next business milestones.

Founders also get access to Microsoft Learn and a variety of programs to help them build connections with customers and accelerate their growth.

The Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub centres around these three key areas:

Unlocking innovations for all: The platform eliminates traditional barriers founders face when starting, such as venture capital requirements or third-party validation to help any founder, regardless of background, location, or access, to be successful.

Technology benefits that grow: Keeping pace with a startup’s lifecycle, the platform helps founders speed development with free access to GitHub and the Microsoft Cloud with the ability to unlock additional benefits over time

Access to mentorship and guidance: Through the platform, startups can connect with industry veterans, access tailored startup-centric training and innovate quickly with expert technical guidance.

Check out what’s new on our YouTube channel. Subscribe to follow for the latest videos and news in the ecosystem.

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Meet Ghana’s Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP)

Meet Ghana’s Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP)

Every good work done deserves an acknowledgement or reward and Microsoft recognizes technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with their community by honouring them with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award. The MVP award spans over 100 contribution areas in 11 award categories across developer and IT Pro products and services technology areas including open source.

The Microsoft MVP global community has over 4,000 technical experts and community leaders across 90 countries who support in the advancement and adoption of Microsoft technologies. Out of which 56 recipients are awarded in nine African countries. South Africa and Nigeria record the highest number of MVPs with 16 each, followed by Ghana with 8. Egypt has 5, 4 in Morocco, Mauritius and Tunisia with 2 each and Senegal, Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire with 1 MVP each.

Before the year 2019, even though there were Microsoft MVPs in Africa and the Middle East region, there weren’t any from Ghana. This however changed when Abou Conde founder of the Microsoft User Group Ghana community got awarded in the Azure category. The situation has improved over the past few years with Microsoft turning its focus and commitment towards Africa. The number of award recipients in Africa has since increased from 32 to 56. Ghana now has eight Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals across five award categories. Microsoft Azure, AI, Business Applications, Data Platform, Developer Technologies and Office Apps & Services.

Here below are Ghana’s Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals passionately sharing their knowledge with the community. Read on to get to know them, and follow and contact them on their channels.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals Ghana

Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals MVP Ghana Africa

Abou CONDE – Award category: Microsoft Azure

Abou is a Senior Cloud & Infra Security Consultant in Avanade’s Security Talent Community based in Paris, France. He was awarded the first MVP in 2019 before moving to France in August 2021 to join METSYS as a System Architect and then Avanade. He lived and worked in Ghana as a Senior Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Consultant at Axxend. He also worked with GITS and IPMC. He became the first-ever Microsoft MVP in Ghana and Microsoft Azure MVP in West Africa.

He is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert in Cloud Platform and Infrastructure, Microsoft Certified Solution Associate in Microsoft Azure Security, and Microsoft 365 Security. He is also an expert in cloud solutions architecture, including the IaaS, PaaS, and hybrid cloud scenarios, migrations/deployments, systems administration, and virtualization.

Abou is the Founder of Microsoft User Group Ghana Community (MUGGH), Speaker, and Blogger. He is a frequent speaker and organizer at various Microsoft Azure, Cybersecurity, Microsoft 365, Windows Server Events, and other User Group conferences.

Samuel Segbornya Kodzo Adranyi – Award Category: Microsoft Azure

Samuel is a Senior Software Engineer and Technical Lead with extensive experience and knowledge in most areas of application development, data analytics, internet of things, artificial intelligence, mixed reality and machine learning.

He is an early adopter, abreast with emerging technologies, trends, patterns and architectures with applicable skills in Cloud Development, SDLC, application life cycle management (ALM) and DevOps spanning over 15 years in all phases of small to large-scale software projects.

With a strong passion for problem-solving, he loves curating and mashing up technologies from IoT, AI, ML and programming to solve the most demanding, and complex challenges you throw at him. He has built, trained, managed and coordinated dedicated, capable and technical distributed offshore teams, especially in Africa and led them to deliver beyond expectations and world-class solutions.

Aside from his technical competencies, Samuel is a community leader, Blogger, Pod-caster and Streamer. He is the Co-Organizer for the Accra .NET User Group and the Organizer of the Accra Power Platform User Group. He has a weekly podcast that highlights Africans all over the world in Technology and streams 3 times a week on IoT (IoT Tuesday – Tuesdays), General Azure and Technology (Demystify Tech – Fridays) and Power Platform (Power Series – Sundays).

Frank Arkhurst Odoom – Award Category – Developer Technologies

Frank is a software consultant, a Managing Partner at Accede and the co-organizer of the Accra .NET User Group. He loves teaching software development and contributing to the open-source ecosystem.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the .Net Foundation with the goal of creating a strong awareness and presence of open-source .NET technology in underserved communities. He also serves as the .Net Foundation Education Committee Chairperson.

Dawuda Iddrisu – Award Category – AI

Dawuda Iddrisu is a full-stack software developer and Chief Technology Officer at BezoMoney. He is a B.Sc. graduate in Information Technology and former president of the Computer Science Society of the University for Development Studies (UDS).

He is passionate about creating innovative products and changing lives with his soft and technical skills by organizing training programs and workshops. In 2019, while still at the university, he served as a Microsoft Gold Learn Ambassador and his activities as an ambassador earned him the outstanding Microsoft Student Partner EMEA Award.

He is also an ambassador at AI Gaming and a board member of the Global AI Community.

Bernard Obeng Boateng – Award Category – Office Apps & Services

Bernard is a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Financial Modeler and Data Analyst with over 10 years of work experience in Banking, Insurance and Business Development. He is a certified Microsoft Excel Expert skilled in Business Analytics, Dashboards and building Financial models for Budgeting, Business Valuation, Scenario Planning and Investments.

He runs the Finex Project, a pro bono student training outreach program for students in Microsoft Excel, Office Tools and Financial Modeling. Bernard provides consultancy services for SMEs (start-ups and existing ones) in Financial Management, Business Planning and Research.

Bernard is also the founder of Finex Skills Hub and co-founder of Business Evolution Systems & Training Ltd.

He has an active audience of about 16,000 followers on his LinkedIn where he shares tips and tricks on Microsoft Excel and other Office Apps.

Eric Entsie – Award Category – Business Applications

Eric Entsie is a Chartered Accountant by profession and manager at the National Health Insurance Authority with a career objective to improve business work processes through the use of information technology.

He is also a Power Platform enthusiast and a Super User in the Power Apps Community Platform. He likes to contribute to the community by providing support to users.

Thomas Festus Cudjoe – Award Category – Data Platform

Festus is a Microsoft Certified Power BI Analyst, a Google Certified Data analyst, a Chartered Accountant, and a Chartered Global Management Accountant with professional qualifications from the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG) and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK (CIMA).

He is the founder and the lead trainer at FestMan Learning Hub, a Leading Edtech firm that provides premium Digital Skills Bootcamps in Data Science, Financial Modeling, Data Analytics, UX Design, and Digital Marketing.

Festus has trained over 1500 professionals in Data Analytics, Financial Modeling, Modern Excel, and Power BI over the past 5 years. He is passionate about technology and loves sharing his experience with others.

Shadrack Inusah – Award Category – Business Applications

Shadrack is a software developer, ex-Gold Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador (MLSA) and a member of the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors Low Code No Code League. He is also a Power Platform Specialist with community-building experience, assisting experts and citizen developers.

Shadrack loves to network and help students learn and build to solve a technical world problem. He also likes to mentor students for the MLSA program in Africa.

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