Microsoft’s Africa Transformation Office (ATO) is announcing a two-day Xbox Game Studios Game Camp in Africa. To empower African creators to realize their potential in the gaming industry through unique learning experiences from industry leaders. The conference will run from July 15th – 16th, 2023.
The two full days events are themed “The Journey of a Game” and will offer multiple perspectives on the complex craft of game development. In addition, there will be online learning components to the camp, which will allow participants to engage with focused training modules on topics that align closely with their skills and interests, before and after the event.
While the camp is available online for all registered campers, Game Camp will also host in-person viewing events for 100 selected campers at the Microsoft campuses in Cairo, Johannesburg, Lagos, and Nairobi. These sites will offer viewing parties on-site panel sessions and opportunities to meet with Microsoft and Xbox personnel. Furthermore, teams or individuals with games to pitch are encouraged to do so.
To participate, individuals must be of legal age, reside in any country on the African continent, and be studying or working part or full-time in the field of software development, visual arts, 3D, music and audio, web design, narrative design, or professional project management. See the complete list of participation requirements at Xbox.com.
“At Xbox, we’re on a mission to bring the joy and community of gaming to the world’s 3 billion gamers and we recognize that Africa is home to the largest population of youth in the world, many who love to play. In 2019 I attended the opening of our Africa Development Centre and met with tech leaders, educators, and developers from across the region to understand their vision for the future of game creation. Through the inaugural Xbox Game Studios Camp Africa, in collaboration with Microsoft’s Africa Transformation Office, we have an opportunity to continue to deepen our relationships with talented developers in region and help African games studios realize their vision and role in the global gaming industry,” said Phil Spencer, CEO, Gaming at Microsoft.
The Xbox Game Studios Game Camp program is an initiative that unifies various Xbox initiatives under one umbrella where talent is celebrated and game developers are empowered to pursue their dreams.
“At Microsoft, we are excited to enable African game developers and creators to build faster through access to tools and resources, and to help their games be discovered by players in Africa and around the world. We want to grow strong roots in this significant market for gaming and game development. The ATO and Xbox personnel will also combine efforts to identify game studios to invest in through our Startups acceleration program and venture capital investment partners. I’m looking forward to seeing what innovative concepts this Game Camp produces,” says Wael Elkabbany, Strategic Initiatives Lead for Microsoft CEMA.
Microsoft is partnering with OCP Africa through its Africa Transformation Office (ATO), with the goal of positively impacting smallholder farmers and Agri-stakeholders across Africa by 2025. OCP Africa, an African company that provides fertilizer solutions tailored to local conditions as well as the needs of soils and crops throughout the continent, will collaborate with Microsoft to strengthen and scale its digital agriculture platform. This platform improves farmer productivity while allowing them to better manage their businesses.
“In this time of increasing food insecurity, enhancing the resilience and livelihoods for smallholder farmers is needed to drive increased agriculture productivity, including reducing losses in the food production chain. With the increasing impacts of more frequent extreme weather events, adaptation, and resilience are of crucial importance to the food system’s transformation,” said Wael Elkabbany, General Manager for Microsoft Africa Regional Cluster.
The announcement was made in Doha, Qatar at the 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries. The collaboration will enable smallholder farmers to gain access to skilling and information through Agri-digital services, leveraging OCP Africa programs such as the Farmer Hub concept to support millions of farmers. OCP Africa will also collaborate with Microsoft to explore the use of big data, machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to build their data and AI platform to improve operational efficiency and better serve ecosystem stakeholders.
On his part, the CEO of OCP Africa Dr. Mohamed Anouar Jamali said: “African agriculture is at a transformational moment in its history – and a time of incredible possibility and promise for farmers and industry alike. Digitizing agricultural practices in Africa allows smallholder farmers to optimize their decision-making, which in turn helps optimize production. The partnership between OCP Africa and Microsoft will allow us to increase the services provided and scale up our digital agriculture platform, expand our reach, and make an even bigger impact on food security across the continent.”
Collaboration with African AgriTech startups, agricultural firms, and partners to increase access to technology, skills, and agricultural knowledge is expected to optimize the industry and generate new revenue streams that will ensure global food security. The adoption and integration of technologies such as the Cloud, AI, Agri Data Platforms, and Azure App modernization into the agricultural space is also expected to deliver transformation in the form of precision agriculture.
“We believe that precision farming, brought about by the adoption of advanced technologies into the agricultural sector, will revolutionize food production and help to eliminate hunger and poverty in Africa. Technology is the key factor in enabling and increasing access to finance, equipment, and sustainability for rural farmers, empowering local farmers in Africa. Our partnership with OCP Africa will help to directly impact smallholder farmers and improve production,” added Elkabbany.
Microsoft, through its Africa Transformation Office (ATO), has announced a partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to support digital transformation in Africa’s agricultural sector.
In a session during the Adaptation and Agriculture Day at COP27 in Egypt, the IFC and Microsoft highlighted the partnership that aims to deliver digital agriculture products that support African agribusinesses to strengthen food security and develop greater resilience against climate change.
Through the partnership, digital tools such as Microsoft’s AgBot and Community Training applications are integrated with IFC’s Agribusiness Leadership Program to provide better information, newer technologies, and management capacity training to agribusinesses, farmers, and cooperatives.
“Digital technology can improve the operation of key supply chains in the food system by boosting production, improving business practices, promoting traceability, and increasing access to finance. However, the use of digital tools in Africa’s agriculture sector remains limited, often because of infrastructure, affordability, awareness, and regulatory issues,” said Henrik Elschner Pedersen, IFC’s Director for Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services in Africa.
“IFC and Microsoft are working together to change this so more agricultural players in Africa can leverage the power of the digital economy.”
Henrik Elschner Pedersen, IFC’s Director for Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services in Africa.
In Africa, agriculture is estimated to contribute about 25 percent of Africa’s GDP and 70 percent of its employment. However, the supply chains of many agribusinesses in the continent are fragmented and suffer from poor information flows. Additionally, many farmers rely on traditional agronomic practices and technologies that are under increasing pressure from climate-related shocks.
Current research estimates that smallholder farmers account for 80 percent of the farming community, with an estimated 33 million smallholder farmers. But they are often hard to reach, residing in remote areas, and lack access to skills, knowledge, and agricultural support services. Digital technology can improve the operation of key supply chains in the food system through greater agricultural efficiencies, improved business practices, traceability, food safety, and access to finance.
On his part, Kunle Awosika, Managing Director for Microsoft ATO said: “The changing climate presents new future opportunities for farmers in relation to emerging markets for carbon credits, regenerative agriculture, and the application of ‘nature-based services’. However, these new opportunities need to be underpinned by robust management and reporting systems. These are precisely the systems that are supported by the new suite of digital tools,”
The package of digital tools provides users with the opportunity to upskill in areas such as more productive climate-smart farming practices and the application of ‘farming as a business. The digital tools delivered through the partnership are leveraging Microsoft’s agritech chatbot known as the AgBot, which provides extension and advisory services to smallholder farmers using either feature phones or smartphones, via SMS, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
The AgBot provides a key platform that farmers can use to access information such as weather alerts, crop advisories, pest diagnosis, and market prices. Stakeholders in the agriculture ecosystem including governments, IFC, development partners, and private companies can also access the platform to deliver information to users. To date, over 500,000 farmers are actively using the AgBot to access information and improve productivity.
“By using digital channels, agronomic and business sensitive information is delivered directly to smallholder farmers to help improve productivity as well as mitigate the risks associated with climate change and unexpected weather events. Combined, the digital tools encourage improved farming practices, more sustainable and resilient farming practices, and greater efficiencies in resource use,” says Awosika.
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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.
“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 announcing that it is expanding its partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to support Africa’s young entrepreneurs facing a lack of investment and affordable access to finance under the bank’s Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks (YEIB) Initiative.
The expanded partnership seeks to support the establishment of national-level institutions through a public-private collaboration model to scale up technical and financial support for youth entrepreneurs and build their capacity. Through its African Transformation Office (ATO), Microsoft will work with the bank to develop youth entrepreneurship ecosystems, create jobs, and scale impact in Africa through digital inclusion.
Youth entrepreneurship, Microsoft notes will go a long way to solving the employment challenge. But admits a lack of investment, affordable access to finance, and quality business development services still present significant hurdles. The Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank is a unique value proposition set up by the African Development Bank that anchors and integrates efforts to develop entrepreneurship ecosystems in Africa.
“We believe much can be done to help foster youth entrepreneurship by collaborating with the African Development Bank, driving greater economic inclusion for this key segment of the population, and ultimately building a more prosperous society,” says the General Manager of Microsoft Africa Regional Cluster Wael Elkabbany. “Already we’ve seen considerable success partnering on initiatives such as Coding for Employment, which aims to equip millions of African youth with employable skills, ultimately creating broadscale employment“, he adds.
Through this initiative, the AfDB will bring together all relevant financial and non-financial parties and partners to play their respective roles in supporting youth entrepreneurs through mentorship, coaching, knowledge and experience sharing, and more.
The African Development Bank Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure, and Industrialization Solomon Quaynor says: “The strengthening of our partnership with Microsoft on the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks (YEIB) is an important development in our journey towards harnessing Africa’s demographic dividend and facilitating the creation of millions of jobs for young Africans by 2025. The initiative places much-needed focus on youth entrepreneurship, which is key to achieving our ambitious employment targets.”
Collaborating with both private sectors and partners, the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank will establish a funding scheme, credit guarantee scheme, and technical assistance programs to strengthen providers of services to entrepreneurs. In terms of policy support, it will advocate to governments for the business-enabling environment reforms needed to catalyse youth entrepreneurship.
Microsoft says it will also leverage its partner ecosystem, which covers 54 countries across the continent, to act on crucial technology solutions across four key areas. These include skilling, connectivity, small-to-medium enterprise (SME) digitization, and hardware:
Skilling To connect youth to economic opportunity and employability skills, the partnership will provide them with career pathways and learning content. This includes the use of existing e-learning platforms such as Coding for Employment. The initiative also aims to build the capacity of Enterprise Services Organizations, benefitting youth through training trainers.
Connectivity By leveraging successful connectivity solutions such as Microsoft Airband, the partnership will develop effective infrastructure models to help bridge the digital divide. At the same time, it will support other innovative solutions on the market either through direct or indirect investment.
Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) digitization The partnership also aims to improve SME digital literacy and business skills by creating access to curated learning content, certifications, business solutions, business skills, and specialized digital skills. This will be driven in partnership with LinkedIn and through skilling programs such as MS Learn and the Cloud Academy. Access to finance for digitally enabled SMEs will also be facilitated through Microsoft partnerships.
Hardware SME access to bundled hardware solutions will be created by Microsoft and its partners. SMEs will also be able to purchase Microsoft technology at discounted prices. The partnership also forms an important part of Microsoft ATO’s mission to empower 10 million SMEs through access to skilling initiatives and investments, and to generate the capacity needed to scale and provide digital skills to 30 million Africans.
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