Microsoft held it’s annual Worldwide Partners Conference in Toronto, Canada this month. The event is held yearly to appreciate the efforts of it’s partners in delivering Microsoft Services around the world.
“These partners and their award nominations were truly exceptional, and their accomplishments should be viewed as examples of excellence for every Microsoft partner. Their achievements have enabled clients to perform sufficiently and have given a unique level of autonomy to businesses that was just not possible before,” says Amr Kamel, General Manager (acting) for Microsoft WECA.
Of the many Microsoft Partners around the world 6 of them operating in Africa received recognition. These were honoured as the country Partner of the year at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2016;
Softnet (Country Partner of The Year – Burkina Faso)
SOFTNET has been working with Microsoft in improving the e-gov project with the EPG team. They also worked with the EPG team in the SIGU project.
INOVA (Country Partner of The Year – Côte d’Ivoire)
INOVA specialized in software development, system integration, networking infrastructure and Training. INOVA have been a Microsoft Certified Partner and training center (CPLS) since 2004. They are the first gold partner in The Cloud productivity in Cote d’Ivoire.
Business Connexion Namibia (Pty) Ltd. (Country Partner of The Year – Namibia)
Business Connexion Namibia (Pty) Ltd continuously use Microsoft platform products and solutions to build innovation ICT solutions for their customers. Partners such as Business Connexion play a vital role in growing Microsoft’s footprint in countries such as Namibia through their focus Microsoft approach.
Signal Alliance (Country Partner of The Year – Nigeria)
Signal Alliance are the most Cloud Competent partner in the ecosystem, accomplishing 1 Gold Cloud and 2 silver competencies this year. In FY16 they displayed a high level of commitment to our Cloud Transformation Journey, which is evident in their performance till date.
Dimension Data (Country Partner of The Year – Rwanda)
Through consistent and strategic customer Engagement, Dimension Data have been able to “win over Rwanda as a country”. Working together with Microsoft, Dimension Data closed the 1st ever full Cloud banking deal in Rwanda, Bank of Kigali. Dimension Data is currently also engaged in the deployment of Office 365 Edu at the ministry of Education. A large transformative project that will impact millions of students.
FTF (Country Partner of The Year – Senegal)
FTF is a solutions provider in complementary areas of computing covering cloud services, the design and the implementation of Basic Infrastructure services, infrastructure services supporting productivity, infrastructure services supporting the application platform, security, training, and support.
Dimension Data (Country Partner of The Year – Tanzania)
Dimension Data has shown key strengths in understanding the Tanzania market therefore selecting strategically which sectors to play in. Dimension Data has been able to achieve significant progress in positioning additional products like share point.
At the Honouring Our Partner Awards ceremony the following companies received awards;
Microsoft West, East and Central Africa (WECA) also rewarded their Microsoft Partners for excellence in specific competencies:
Techno Brain (Kenya) for application development
eSolutions Consulting (Ghana) for cloud packaged solutions and education
Dimension Data Solutions (Kenya) for communications and cloud productivity
The Cloud Factory EMEA (Mauritius) received the data platform award as well as the data analytics award along with Currimjee Informatics (Mauritius)
Full Technologies Formations (Senegal) received an award for hybrid cloud and infrastructure
M-KOPA Solar (Kenya) received the Internet of Things (IoT) award
ComputerPride (Kenya) got the learning award
M2M Systems (Kenya) received the small and midmarket cloud solutions award
Inova Solutions got the Windows and devices deployment award
Elytis (Mauritius) was named distributor of the Year
Eclectics International (Kenya) received the Microsoft Dynamics Industry award
Novabase (Mozambique) received the government award
Finally, VeriPark received the General Manager Award for their partnership with Microsoft in developing products that drive great service and meet customers’ business needs.
Four teams from Africa qualify to present at the Imagine Cup Finals 2016 scheduled to take place in Seattle, United States.
The teams from Tunisia, Nigeria and South Africa will compete head to head with 31 other student developer teams from July 26th to the 29th to become the next Imagine Cup Champions. Winners of the competition will receive as part of the package a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella and $50,000.
Judges of this year’s Imagine Cup finals include from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, lead actor John Boyega and Dr. Jennifer Tang, part of the duo behind the 2014 Imagine Cup Champion.
Let’s introduce you to the teams who are presenting from Africa in this year’s Imagine Cup 2016 finals.
• Digital Interactive Games from South Africa and presenting in the Games category.
• Basilisk, from Tunisia and presenting in the Innovation category.
• The Humane Team, from Nigeria and presenting in the World Citizenship category.
• Night’s Watch, from Tunisia and presenting in the World Citizenship category.
Digital Interactive Games team is made up of Jason Cross and Nicholas Jordaan. Software Development students of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Jason and Nicholas are working on a 3D game called Of Dragons and Sheep.
Of Dragons and Sheep is a fast paced 3D sidescroller where the hero must save his beloved sheep from the vicious dragons. The player must face the challenges put forward by the dragons and must get to the safety of their castle while saving as many of their sheep as possible. The hero has great powers, these will allow him/her to travel to another dimension where time is meaningless however they must be alert as dark and mysterious creatures lurk here as well.
Basilisk is a team of four students, Anis Allani, Ferchichi Ghassen, kaouther oueslati and Sabrine Sassi. Team Basilisk envisions the use of technology to help peoples live and stay healthy answer working on Project ProtectMe.
ProtectMe is a pressure and shear sensing technology, a groundbreaking innovation initially addressed to people with diabetes, aiming at preventing foot or toe amputation. Since some diabetic patients lose sensitivity and have ulcers that can lead to amputations, we came up with ProtectMe an innovative product that enables those persons to prevent an aggravation of their disease that can lead in severe cases to amputation of the foot. It can help to monitor pressure on the defective part of the foot palm to avoid an aggravation of ulcers. ProtectMe contains a multitude of micro sensors to measure pressure and shear forces providing on demand information, wirelessly, also, it contains micro vibrators and transcutaneous electrical stimulants for reducing pain in the defective parts of the foot palm.
The Humane Team is made up of four undergraduate students in the department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering class of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. Team Humane is made up of Shoaga Victor, Oyatope Blessing, Ayodele Obasegun and Otaru Babatunde.
The Humane platform allows the Windows Smart Phone easily accessible to the visually impaired. The Visually impaired can now, surf the web, dial numbers, send messages, receive notifications, play music, interact with their environment using their Windows 8 Mobile Smart Phone.
Night’s Watch is a team of 4 engineering students who question everything, are driven by passion and technology. Team members include Assil Mekki, Ben Said Amir, Mohamed Zied Cherif, and Soumaya Tekaya.
Night’s Watch project is inspired by our colleagues who suffers from amputations during their growth. We have seen the struggle they have to put up with to get through every normal thing we take for granted.
The cost and accessibility of these prosthetics are beyond their reach and we believe that for something that is vital for every human being, it is highly unconsidered. We therefore created a prosthetics that not only does not require any surgical intervention, it is easy and simple to use.
The hand connected to a myo armband will detect the muscle movement of the user and will move the hand according the needs of the user.
We wish these guys all the best and cheer them on to make us proud. Did you take part in this years Imagine Cup 2016 qualifiers tell us your experience?
Microsoft Nigeria went out of it’s way to show love during the season of love with the Act of Kindness program.
The employees of Microsoft Nigeria spent a whole day with students of the Jinadu Anglican Primary School, Ikoyi, Lagos where they taught students and painted the school walls.
The team believes Microsoft’s goal is to enable, empower and inspire people and organizations to do more and that was exactly what they set out to do with their Act of Kindness during the valentine season of love.
Microsoft Nigeria partnered with United For Education Foundation and TechCity to show love. Microsoft’s partnership with United for Education Foundation’s, Teach for Change program has already seen them provide volunteers for four other schools in Lagos State.
Kabelo Makwane, Managing Director at Microsoft Nigeria said the children have been touched and we’ve given them a new sense of perspective and they’ll one day do great things and achieve more.
At Microsoft Nigeria we asked how can we spend more time with this children and show them love and we thought this is it. – Olusen Adenuga, MSD Global Mkt. Operations
You can check out more photos from of the event by searching the hashtag #ActOfKindnessMicrosoft on social media.
Did you participate in the Act of Kindness or did you show any kind of Microsoft kindness this valentines day, kindly share with us in the comments.
Nigeria has officially seen the launch of Microsoft mobile’s latest flagship the Lumia 950 XL and Lumia 950.
The two flagships devices were announced sometime back and have been making their way to various markets around the world. The new devices run Windows 10 mobile and shares the same code base as Windows 10 PC.
Microsoft mobile Nigeria unveiled the Lumia 950 and 950 XL devices at a media roundtable held February 4th, 2016 at the Civic Towers, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Joseph Umunakwe, Microsoft Mobile Devices and Services General Manager West, East and Central Africa, at the event spoke about Microsoft’s commitment to empowering every individual and organization on the planet to achieve more.
“The Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL deliver a familiar and consistent experience that extends across your Windows devices from key apps like Office built-in to provide access to all your stuff via OneDrive and the cloud.”
Olumide Balogun, Head of Marketing Microsoft Mobile Devices and Services Nigeria and Ghana, stated the Lumia 950/950XL drives seamless experiences from productivity, security, usability and availability. He said,
“Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL provide stunning displays, the latest in processing power, and improved battery life and quick charging. The Continuum for phones feature combined with the Microsoft Display Dock enables you to connect the phones to a monitor, mouse and keyboard and work like a PC.”
The Lumia 950 and 950 XL are currently selling at authorized Microsoft devices partner retail outlets and available on leading online stores.
