Two thousand unemployed youths in Kenya are set to gain employment after taking part in a digital skills initiative. Led by Stanbic Kenya, Microsoft Kenya and the Kenya Ministry of Trade, Industrialization and Enterprise Development.
The digital skills initiative seeks to upskill about 50,000 people affected by the covid-19 pandemic with digital skills this year. This number will increase in subsequent phases to reach half a million Kenyans across the country in the next three years.
Training for the initiative will take place at various government centres. Stanbic Kenya Foundation is donating 480 computers and laptops to the ministry to support the training. The program expects that at least two thousand participants will be placed in employment after their training.
As at August 2020, about one Million Kenyans have lost their jobs due to the pandemic according to Cabinet Secretary Betty Maina.
Watch the full partnership announcement by Microsoft Kenya, Stanbic Kenya and the Ministry of Trade, Industrialization and Enterprise Development below.
https://youtu.be/YmrqaxPVics?t=2231
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Microsoft is announcing a software engineer apprenticeship cohort scheduled to take place in Nairobi, Kenya, through its LEAP apprenticeship program.
Are you a software engineer looking to learn and upscale your talent? Then read on. If this cohort isn’t a fit for you kindly recommend this to anyone who it might be, thank you.
The Microsoft LEAP apprenticeship program is a sixteen-week modern engineering acceleration apprenticeship program focused on inspiring and developing new and diverse talent.
Through five-weeks of technical and non-technical learning instructor-led classes and labs. Ten-weeks of engineering project with an immersion with a Microsoft product team. This is usually with the Microsoft team sponsoring the program. Mentors and leads are assigned during this period. Then a one-week project fair where participants will showcase their engineering project. Hiring managers are present during the presentations to see your body of work and possible interview that can lead to a hire or job offer.
This particular call is for senior software engineers with about eight years of professional programming or technical experience.
The ideal software engineer candidate should be authorized to work in Kenya for the duration of the program as Microsoft is not offering relocation. Basically Kenyan citizens.
The application portal is opened till 12am UTC on February 9th. The cohort will start on March 15th and will be virtual.
The LEAP program has various pathways for varying levels that get announced from time to time, so don’t forget to subscribe to get these details as they come in.
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You go to a shop, purchase an item and want to pay with M-PESA. You look around to find the notice with the till number and take turns looking up and down to enter the number on your phone. More often going over the number one more time or twice if you got it wrong initially. We’ve all been there, especially when you are in a haste.
How will you like a situation where you can just launch the Safaricom, KCB, Equity, I&M or your bank or Sacco’s app and using your camera it gets you that information? You only enter the amount you are paying, your pin number, et voilà you are set to go.
Unfortunately, Safaricom doesn’t have that feature in their app yet. The app, however, allows customers who prefer to use the voucher card to scan the 16 digits and it will automatically pick the digits.
That might change soon with this genius innovation from Jama Mohamed. A Business Information and Technology student graduate of Strathmore University.
Jama created an android detection library that uses Microsoft Azure Computer Vision service Read API to detect M-PESA business account numbers from images.
With this, it will be easier, faster and more accurate than typing an M-PESA paybill and till number. It is also able to know the exact category the image falls under, so no mix match there.
The software engineer’s open source project opens the door for financial service organizations in Kenya using the M-PESA API to add this plug and play android library to their app. Making it easier for customers using their app to use this functionality for payments.
Computer vision innovation
Jama shares the idea for the project came after having to confirm about five times for something he was purchasing.
I was purchasing something from the web that had M-PESA paybill as a payment option. The account number was a long randomly generated string that I basically had to confirm like five times.
And that’s where the idea came from, just to take some form of picture and use machine learning to extract information that was important.
The idea was to get these details a little faster than just typing them all the time since some businesses don’t have QR codes.
Hopefully, Kenyan financial organizations will add Jama Mohamed’s library to their app. Or work with him to create a unique one. So that next time you open your Standard Chartered, KCB, Equity, Ecobank, etc. or Safaricom app to pay for a purchase you just use your camera.
Jama welcomes contributions from other developers to improve the library. Check out the library on GitHub.
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Farmer’s Choice is scaling up the use of advanced technologies within its existing agriculture ecosystem in new partnership with Microsoft.
This will enhance productivity, ensure food safety and quality, as well as reduce waste.
The move by the 40-year old company has been informed by their quest to adopt sustainable farming practices, including increasing the adoption of cloud solutions to improve food quality and security.
“Customers are our priority, and we owe them quality excellence,” says Flora Kinuthia, CIO of Farmer’s Choice.
The coordination of all activities in Microsoft cloud solutions gives the company unmatched visibility over the entire life cycle of meat production, allowing it to respond to supply and demand changes proactively.
“We need to ensure we stay efficient in terms of pricing, wastage, and the use of products in the factory. Therefore, food traceability is especially important to us.”
According to World Bank estimates, food production and processing in Africa currently generates over $300 billion annually. With the continent at large embracing digitally transforming, this figure is only set to rise to $1 trillion a year by 2030 if farmers are given the right access to inputs and resources.
“Working with organisations within the sector, forming partnerships that will benefit individuals in the space and facilitate scaling has allowed for these numbers to become more of a likely reality. In Kenya, Microsoft has partnered with Farmer’s Choice to improve food quality and security,” says Judemark Bwire, Azure Specialist for East and Southern Africa at Microsoft.
According to Eric Muga, the Senior Database Administrator at Farmer’s Choice, the cloud-based solutions help to streamline the information flow between all departments, making vital data accessible to all users, starting from the initial data capture on the farms.
“We have IoT (internet of things) readers that capture data to use with Dynamics 365 Business Central. The procurement management needs to see what is happening on the farms. And the farm management system is completely outside of where we are seated,” Muga explains.
“So, everybody connects to a central location to upload the captured data and work with it.”
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The company’s tech stack also includes automation, which runs on Azure and minimizes human error. Previously, a person would weigh animals and write down the scores manually. This could lead to missing weights or incorrect data that jeopardized decision-making.
“Now, we capture data directly from the main scale, without human intervention, in real-time and with virtually no errors,” he explains further.
Accurate tracking and recordkeeping also benefit the company’s suppliers, who can keep pace with fluctuating inventory levels to match customer expectations.
“We can move fast through operations, updating the system in real-time. We give our salespeople mobile devices so they can take orders and communicate to customers what products are available on the floor,” says Annie Mugumo, Management Accountant at Farmer’s Choice. “This leads to happier customers.”
From a financial perspective, the cloud-based infrastructure generates significant savings. “There have been some running costs in our IT department, like server maintenance or storage. These are now things of the past,” she observes.
Judemark from Microsoft concluded: “Digitally transforming the agriculture space has always been a key priority for our organisation. With Microsoft cloud solutions, Farmer’s Choice can remain focused on sustainability and efficiency as it looks toward the future.”
Check out other stories making the news in the ecosystem.
Microsoft hosts a media round table event throwing light on its endeavours in the agricultural sector in Africa. With partners, Amiran Kenya Limited and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) joining Microsoft to share on their partnership journey in Kenya.
At a time where industries are called to relook operation models to survive, the agricultural sector has emerged as key to long-term growth in Africa and the world. Recognising the need for continuous investment in this area, particularly through technology, Microsoft today hosted a virtual roundtable – further reaffirming its commitment to digitally transforming the sector.
On the continent, investments in agriculture technology have grown year-on-year. This is evident in the number of agri-tech start ups increasing by 110 percent in the past two years. Furthermore, according to World Bank estimates, food production and processing in Africa currently generates over $300 billion annually, but that figure could rise to $1 trillion a year by 2030 if farmers are given the right access to inputs and resources.
Speaking at the event, Amrote Abdella, Regional Director at Microsoft 4Afrika noted that a long-term approach is key to enabling lasting change and impact in the sector.
“Our strategy has always been to build deep partnerships with leading industry, governmental and non-governmental organisations; invest in infrastructure with a focus on solving unique challenges with globally-relevant approaches and build a relevant solution ecosystem. Investing in skills and agri-tech and the sector at large falls directly into this strategy.”
“With the sector sustaining 70 per cent of Africa’s livelihoods, we’ve taken the lead to develop a data-driven, connected farming that optimises yields, boosts farm productivity and increases profitability. Leveraging our extensive partnerships and initiatives network, we are committed to ensuring that all farming communities are equipped with the latest tools like AI, IoT and edge computing to improve productivity and sustainability across the sector,” continues Abdella.
The organisation has worked with various partners and customers across the region to realise this strategy and ensure access to the solutions developed. On a regional level, through its partnership with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Microsoft is exploring the use of big data and artificial intelligence in enabling data-driven, precision farming to support and increase farm productivity and profitability. The partnership also supports farmers in adopting new technologies through digital training content, develops digital skills in agriculture through an internship programme and supports policy advocacy and government engagement around the design of national agriculture digitisation strategies. The collaboration continues to support AGRA’s digital transformation as it works to improve food security for 30 million farming households across 11 countries by 2021.
“Our work with Microsoft has allowed us to deepen each area of work we have begun together both technically and geographically. Drawing on Microsoft’s digital architecture support on digital ecosystems and big data platforms has been beneficial for our organisation internally and externally, to the farmers,” says Vanessa Adams, Vice President Strategic Partnerships and Chief of Party, AGRA.
The organisation, through its 4Afrika initiative also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives (MALFC) to collaborate in accelerating innovation in the agricultural sector in Kenya. As a partner to MALFC, 4Afrika is promoting sustainable growth and development in this sector – helping to preserve its socio-economic value and accelerate much-needed innovation in farming. Microsoft have been designing, piloting and launching a programme to drive innovation that addresses key challenges, such as pests and disease control, sustainable agricultural resource management, agri-weather data, and others.
Locally, SunCulture helps farmers improve their crop yields through solar-powered irrigation systems. Using IoT technology, SunCulture customers are generating 10x more annual income, experiencing a
300% increase in crop yields and saving 17 hours of manually moving water per week. And by leveraging TV white spaces (TVWS) technology that expands high-speed internet access to underserved areas, SunCulture is bringing precision farming to more smallholder farmers.
Another example from Kenya concerns Twiga Foods , a mobile-based business-to-business food supply platform, links smallholder farmers in rural Kenya to informal retail vendors in cities. With Twiga’s mobile platform, vendors can order fresh produce from farmers across Kenya at competitive prices. Twiga is driving microfinancing for smallholder farmers in Kenya, by creating credit history through goods transactions powered by Microsoft cloud solution. It currently benefits 8,000 farmers and 15,000 vendors.
Kenyan farmer-led agricultural product distribution company Amiran has also worked with Microsoft to enable the digital transformation of the industry at large. “Working with Microsoft, we have seen a positive impact, particularly with the ChatBot where PowerBI dashboard capabilities have the potential to be instrumental in accelerating the transformation and access to quality services for those who need it most,” says Trevor Sherwin, Head of Business Development, Amiran
“The purpose of todays virtual roundtable was to draw attention to and create awareness around an industry that is vital for the survival of humanity. We hope that by the insights explained and stories shared, that individuals will embrace the impact of digital transformation in the sector. We also look forward to cultivating new partnerships while strengthening current ones as we continue to work towards food security across the continent.” concludes Abdella.
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Check out other stories making the news from the region.
