I’ve always wanted to improve my skills as a developer. I knew that the best people are at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook. I’ve always wanted the kinds of challenges they represent. I always wanted to work with people who would wow me and teach me at the same time. When I heard that Microsoft had come to Kenya, I knew that “this is my chance”.
This is the story of George Maina, a Software Engineer at the Microsoft Africa Development Center (ADC-East) located in Nairobi, Kenya. He is one of the first hires of Microsoft and works on the Identity and Network Access team in Kenya.
Even though the ADC was an experiment the success of George’s team in the early days will go on to help Microsoft make investing more in the ADC an easy decision. The ADC has grown from 21 employees in three teams to over 400 in more than eight teams in three years. With Microsoft launching a 27 million dollar office facility to house the software engineers.
Geroge works for the Microsoft Graph onboarding team, which is the third team to be formed at the ADC. “Right now, we’re four people, we help teams within Microsoft to onboard onto Graph and to manage their Graph deployments. … My role is to develop tooling to make sure we can automatically link their API when they publish it to our repo.”
I think we were the very first team to join Identity here, and we all came on the same day. There were then three teams at Microsoft’s Africa Development Center (ADC) in Nairobi. Each team had around seven people, making a total of 21. One team came aboard just a week before my team. At that time, it was not really clear where ADC was going. But it turned out really well. We’ve gotten our footing and have developed specialized areas. Several teams are now owners of certain operations within Microsoft. ADC has grown to around 400 just here in Kenya alone. That’s a testament to how well ADC has performed.
I remember when you came to visit, Igor, you said that you’d evaluate the operation after a few years, that it was an experiment. I remember going home that night thinking, wow, what happens if this fails?
I’ve learned so much. The last two years have blown my mind. I love working here and really love Microsoft. Microsoft offers so many opportunities everywhere.
George Maina
Igor Sakhnov, Microsoft Corporate vice president of Identity and Network Access Engineering, talks with software engineer George Maina about his entrepreneurial journey and the beginnings of the Microsoft ADC. Click to read the full conversation.
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Microsoft is committing to training ten thousand software developers in South Africa by the end of 2022. By giving them an opportunity to learn new and modern skills as well as access to the latest technologies. This is in an effort to help in building the local software developer community in the country.
Microsoft will through skilling programs and initiatives upskill developers so that they can add value within informal developer communities as well as across commercial and corporate environments.
“At Microsoft, we understand the power of community says Lillian Barnard, General Manager at Microsoft South Africa. “And appreciate the value these shared spaces can bring to employees, businesses, and, ultimately, the world“, she adds.
Lillian notes that when organizations like Microsoft work together with developer communities to overcome skills gaps the result is creativity and more innovation. Developers with access to the latest technologies and skills result in an acceleration of the digital transformation of businesses.
“When we build thriving developer communities, …, we also create innovations that have a societal impact and that have the potential to change lives.”
Lillian Barnard, Microsoft South Africa MD
Microsoft didn’t throw light on how or who it will partner with to execute this project. However, in previous campaigns, it has worked with developer communities such as the Andela Learning Community, Geekulcha, and other groups.
How do you become a software developer? What are the skills necessary and the pathways available to becoming a software developer? If you have these and many other questions like these then keep reading.
It is Microsoft Build this week and Microsoft is hosting free sessions hosted by software engineers, Technical program managers and Principal software engineers working at Microsoft. It means you will learn about the roles, languages and how to get in and thrive from people with experience. Also, learn several programming languages like Python, C#, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Azure, GitHub, Visual Studio Code, etc.
Learn how to contribute to shared projects using MakeCode and Javascript.
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Check out other stories making the news in the technology ecosystem in Africa and the Middle East.
Microsoft is supporting literally the lifecycle of a developer in the Middle East and Africa says Julien Bertin, Azure Business Lead for Middle East and Africa for Microsoft.
From the time you graduate to the time you retire literally. At every single step of the journey, we have programs to re-skill yourself. Microsoft is fully embracing this journey with the different programs we are launching. Like student certifications. If you are coming out of university and looking for jobs we do placements as well.
Julien made this revelation during an interview with Seth Juarez, Principal Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, for an episode of CodeStories on Channel 9. Where Seth asked Julien what Microsoft is doing to empower developers in the Middle East and Africa region.
Microsoft, Julien notes is one of the first cloud providers to invest in development skills on the African continent. With the launch of two development centers in Kenya and Nigeria.
This enables us and the people in the region to create the skills and generate the value here in the region for Africa.
We want to accelerate digital transformation and the capture of wealth that comes out from digital information. We want to invest in infrastructure, skilling(students and non-graduate students) and enabling innovation in the region.
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Microsoft 4Afrika AppFactory Nigeria Software Developer Internship Opportunity
Microsoft’s AppFactory is looking for software developer interns in Nigeria. The 4Afrika AppFactory initiative tries to bridge the gap of Africans who understand and use modern technologies and platforms. Thus making them highly employable with modern developer and digital skills in this era of digital transformation.
The internship is being offered by Sidmach Technologies, hosts of Microsoft’s 4Afrika Nigeria AppFactory. This software developer internship will be a learning and development curve that’ll most probably also end with a placement. The offer says;
“The AppFactory is an internship programme that recruits young developers. Helps them gain vital work experience while building fun and clever apps. Young up-and-coming developers will gain real-world experience to prepare them for the workplace. Making it easier for them to find jobs and giving them more to offer their prospective employers.
Kindly click to read and find out more about the Software Developer Internship opportunity. Also don’t forget to click apply now if you qualify to participate.
