Microsoft is bringing the power of technology to help nonprofits achieve their missions. I’ll share on its history and how to go about benefitting from this offer.
Microsoft is on a mission to empower every organization and person on the planet to achieve more. This has led Microsoft in its endeavor to launch a series of initiatives. These include the Insiders4Good initiative, the Cloud for Global Good, Affordable Access and many more. The Insiders4Good has seen 25 entrepreneurial ideas turned to businesses in Nigeria and 20 in East Africa. The Affordable Access grant initiative has seen 11 African enterprises receive grant funds to grow their businesses in underserved communities.
Microsoft is hoping to donate 1 billion dollars in cloud computing resources to nonprofits and researchers over 3 years. Microsoft believes about 70,000 organizations around the world can benefit from this initiative. They’ll receive Microsoft Cloud Services; Azure, Office 365, Power BI, CRM Online, the Enterprise Mobility Suite and Windows 10.
“Microsoft is empowering mission-driven organizations around the planet with a donation of cloud computing services. Now more than 70,000 organizations will have access to technology that will help them solve our greatest societal challenges and ultimately improve the human condition and drive new growth equally” – Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO
How do nonprofits benefit from the Microsoft Cloud for Global Good offering?
In every region of the world, Microsoft has partner organizations that administer this offer. So, you’ll need to check with the Microsoft office in your region on this. I’ll focus on the Africa region in this post, but if you read on you’ll get to know what you’ll need to qualify. TechSoup is a partner organization in Africa. This means if you have a local TechSoup office in your country, they’ll be your go-to guys. If not, they also have other partners in your country. For example, in West Africa, West Africa Civil Society Institute, WACSI.(*Partner details below)
You must first apply to the partner organization in charge of your country. Select the offers suitable to your organization and which service type you’ll benefit from.
Here are some helpful details for nonprofits
Requirements for Nonprofits to qualify for the offer.
Legally registered as a nonprofit organization;
In most cases, you’ll be required to provide a valid registration certificate. (*for some you’ll need to provide a revenue authority identification number. For others, you must have operated for at least 2 years)
The registration Process.
You can contact the partner organization in your region or register online. To register, go to www.techsoup.global, select your country, click on Join now to request donations, and fill out the registration form. If you initiate your donation request from Microsoft you will be redirected to the partner platform to be validated as a Nonprofit before you can process to check out the selected product.
Coverage area/region of implementing Partner Organizations Africa.
Current Africa Regional Partners:
SANGONet West Africa Civil Society Institute, WACSI, WACSITech (For more information organizations can contact us at wacsitech@wacsi.org) Kenya Community Development Foundation, KCDF Professional Development Foundation, PDF
[table id=1 /]
If you visit www.techsoup.global and select your country, you will be redirected to the partner website.
What are the benefits? What do you get when you apply? Is there a duration of the package, does it become a paid service after a period or when it exceeds a limit?
All software and cloud solutions offered by Microsoft is donated. But there is a small administrative fee you’ll be made to pay.The program is a Technology donation program for non-profits. This program aims to help nonprofit organization access technology products and services at discounted price (up to 95% less than the market value). This is an administration fee that nonprofit organizations contribute to get access to the products and service. Once an organization is registered for the program, it can benefit from the products of its choice available on the catalog at any moment.
Specifically, for Office 365, nonprofit organizations have discounted rates of subscription, different from the standard user fee/month.
Kindly note that Microsoft doesn’t validate nonprofits, so you’ll need to register with the partners.
Have you benefited from this offering? Share your thoughts with us.
Team Morocco will be representing Africa at the 2017 Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals. The only surviving African team in the world finals. They’ll be looking to make Africa proud by winning the championship with their idea.
The 2017 Imagine Cup World Finals will take place on the 27th of July at the Microsoft campus in Redmond. 54 teams from around the globe will present their innovations for the chance to win the ultimate prize package. It isn’t going to be any easy. These are the best innovations picked from the finals of the various regions across the globe. Team E-Park from Morocco qualified through the Middle East and Africa competition held in Lebanon.
This year marks the 15th year of the competition. With such high stakes, there is also over $ 200,000 in prizes to be won. This is double the prize package from previous years. The winner of the competition will receive $100,000, a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, a $120,000 Azure Grant and a trip to Microsoft Build 2018 developer conference.
It’s a bit disappointing not to see the other qualifiers from Uganda and South Africa make it through to the finals.
Team E-Park presents for Africa at 2017 Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals
So what is Team E-Park’s idea? It’s a web and mobile-based solution to finding a parking space. Read more about the team and their project here.
You would be able to see the parking space in real time, know which ones are taken, and which ones are free and head straight there. Not only that but you’d also be able to reserve the empty parking space ahead of your arrival. Other features include keeping track of your car in the parking lot, and in app parking service payment.
Microsoft Executive Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise group Scott Guthrie will be the Host of the event. Also, Microsoft’s Windows Insider chief Donar Sarkar will be a coach and will mentor at the championship.
Other teams from the Middle East and Africa region will be presenting for the ultimate prize. That’s teams Green Jam (UAE), Bl!nk (Lebanon), DocStroke (Jordan), Beta (Oman) and WaCoMo(Qatar).
Last year teams from Tunisia did quite well, making it to the last round of the competition but didn’t win the title. Other teams from last year were from Nigeria and South Africa.
The Imagine Cup Championship will be live via a webcast at 9 a.m. PDT on July 27. We’ll do well to have it available on the page so bookmark this page and come watch it live.
Excited about Africa at 2017 Microsoft Imagine cup world finals? Let’s hear what you think in the comments.
The East Africa Fellowship of Microsoft’s 2nd cohort of the Insiders4Good program is under way. 20 ideas were selected from as many entrants from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The past weeks, the fellows have been involved in a boot camp led by Microsoft’s Insider team. The boot camp is to familiarize and prepare them for the six months fellowship program. Meet the East Africa fellows and learn about their ideas here. Below is a video shared by Neowin.com about the fellows and their ideas.
During the fellowship, fellows will be taken through how to build a business out of their ideas. There’ll be mentorship sessions, and fellows will receive technical, hardware and software supports.
Andy Weir spent some time with the fellows during the boot camp and shared a post on it.
I learnt from Andy’s interview with Jeremiah Marbel, Windows Insider Director that these fellowships will soon be translated as a model for Insiders worldwide. I’ve seen from various interactions, people asking when the Insider4Good program will get to their countries. This seems best as Microsoft might not be able to do the fellowship in each country.
Microsoft is now exploring ways to ‘package’ the Fellowship as a set of resources for Windows Insiders around the world. These will include videos, blogs, and other guides to enable people to ‘help themselves’ in working on their personal and professional projects, and Microsoft intends to expand and refine those resources based on feedback from its Insider community. – Andy – Neowin
What do you think about the Fellowship program and Microsoft’s plan to roll the model worldwide?
6 companies from Africa have qualified to receive funding in Microsoft’s second Affordable Access Initiative grant fund project.
“My dream is to enable local entrepreneurs have low-cost connectivity solutions. So that those entrepreneurs can solve their own last-mile problems versus waiting for the largess of some other company.” — Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO
The Microsoft Affordable Access Initiative Grant Fund is a Microsoft initiative that supports innovative businesses to grow and scale. The fund assists companies working to bring internet access and new technologies, services and models to underserved markets. That’s companies with initiatives ranging from last mile access technologies, off-grid renewable energy solutions and alternative payment mechanisms. With innovations in finance, payments, healthcare, education and agriculture.
“The social enterprises we support have inspired us with practical, high-impact and scalable approaches to help close the digital divide.
It’s a privilege to see these solutions take shape, and play a role in helping local entrepreneurs spur job creation and economic growth.
We’re inspired by our grantees’ passion. To bring internet, energy access and economic benefits to parts of the world that need it most.
It’s our privilege to support the work of innovators helping to improve their communities.“ – Paul Garnett, Microsoft Affordable Access Initiatives Director
Microsoft Corporation renewed its Affordable Access Initiative grant fund for a second year. Here are the beneficiaries from Africa.
Recipients of the 2017 grant fund from Africa come from 5 African countries. This year’s recipients include Kukua Weather Services (Uganda), Solaris Offgrid (Tanzania), Standard Microgrid (Zambia), SunCulture (Kenya), VisionNet and WrightGrid (Democratic Republic of the Congo). Read more about their initiatives by clicking here.
The companies will receive funding and software to help power and develop their businesses. Microsoft BizSpark, Microsoft’s development and test software that includes Azure, Windows, Visual Studio, Office and SQL Server. The grant recipients will also join a growing ecosystem of other grantees and funders to further increase their impact.
Visit, read and learn how you can apply and benefit from this grant fund when the next applications open.
Two teams from Africa qualified for the 2017 Microsoft Imagine Cup World finals by submitting applications through the online finals.
Teams from Uganda and South Africa have qualified to participate in this years Microsoft Imagine Cup world finals. Team LabTECH Innovation from Uganda and BITSplease from South Africa landed 2 out of the 3 possible qualifying spots. With the 3rd spot won by a team from Spain. These teams will join the other qualifiers from the Middle East and Africa competition held in Lebanon.
There are two ways to qualify for the Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals held each year. One way is to participate in the national competitions held by the Microsoft or recognized organization in your country. The other is to submit your project online. This option is usually for teams in countries without a Microsoft office or no scheduled competitions.
So this is how the teams from Uganda and South Africa made their qualification. These teams will have to like the others prepare to present their projects at the finals in Seattle July 27th. Any of the participating teams can walk away with over $200,000 in prizes.
About our 2017 Online Finals winners from Africa.
Team LabTECH Innovation from Uganda
Stephen Kalyesubula, Alvin Leonard and Fred Byakuyamba are team members of labTECH. They developed an integrated hardware and a mobile application for diagnosis and monitoring of maternal health.
LabTECH Innovations project is an integrated solution called UriSAF. It’s for effective diagnosis and monitoring of maternal health in low resource settings with their application and Uri scope device.
Check out Team labTech on Facebook and Twitter and read all about their project here.
Team BITSplease from South Africa
BITSplease is a team from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. The members include Computer Science and Software Engineering students Jihyun Byun and Jacques Oosthuizen. They built a platform that helps users overcome multiple forms of addiction.
Alice is an online environment that helps its users overcome multiple forms of addiction. It allows for portability and easy communication between users and their counselors. So, no matter where in the world our users are, they can always receive the help they require.
Check out Team BITSplease and read all about project Alice here.
We wish all the teams representing Africa the best and hope they make it to the finals of the Imagine Cup 2017 competition and win. Teams E-Park (Morocco), BITSplease (South Africa) and labTECH Innovation (Uganda) have qualified for the world finals in Seattle to represent Africa.
Microsoft announced the 
