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Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Microsoft's Initiative To Help Improve the Africa's
Competitiveness
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Microsoft introduced the Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative, a new effort
focusing on accelerating adoption of smart devices, empowering
small and medium-sized businesses, and raising skills development
in Africa.
By 2016, the 4Afrika Initiative plans to help place tens of
millions of smart devices in the hands of African youth, bring
million African small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) online,
upskill 100,000 members of Africa's existing workforce, and help an
additional 100,000 recent graduates develop employability skills,
75 percent of whom Microsoft will help place in jobs.
"The world has recognized the promise of Africa, and Microsoft
wants to invest in that promise. We want to empower African youth,
entrepreneurs, developers, and business and civic leaders to turn
great ideas into a reality that can help their community, their
country, the continent and beyond," said Fernando de Sousa, general
manager, 4Afrika Initiative. "The 4Afrika Initiative is built on
the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate growth for Africa,
and Africa can also accelerate technology for the world."
As a first step toward increasing the adoption of smart devices,
Microsoft and Huawei are introducing the Huawei 4Afrika Windows
Phone 8, in which will come preloaded with select applications
designed for Africa. The phone will initially be available in
Angola, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South
Africa later this month. The Huawei 4Afrika phone will be targeted
toward university students, developers and first-time smartphone
users.
To improve technology access, Microsoft also announced the
deployment of a pilot project with the Kenyan Ministry of
Information and Communications and Kenyan Internet service provider
Indigo Telecom Ltd. to deliver low-cost wireless broadband and
create new opportunities for commerce, education, healthcare and
delivery of government services across Kenya. The deployment is
called "Mawingu," which is Kiswahili for cloud. It is the first
deployment of solar-powered base stations working together with TV
white spaces, a technology partially developed by Microsoft
Research, to deliver high-speed Internet access to areas currently
lacking even basic electricity. Microsoft hopes to implement
similar pilots in East and Southern Africa in the coming months to
further explore the commercial feasibility of TV white space
technology. These pilots will be used to encourage other African
countries to accelerate legislation that would enable this TV white
space technology to deliver on the promise of universal access for
Africa.
To help empower African SMEs, Microsoft announced a new SME Online
Hub through which African SMEs will have access to free, relevant
products and services from Microsoft and other partners. The hub
will aggregate the available services, which can help SMEs expand
their businesses locally, find new business opportunities outside
their immediate geographies and help increase their overall
competitiveness. Microsoft will provide free domain registration
for one year and free tools for SMEs interested in creating a
professional Web presence. The hub is expected to initially open in
April in South Africa and Morocco and will expand to other African
markets over time.
To accelerate capacity building and skills development, Microsoft
has established the Afrika Academy, an education platform
leveraging online and offline learning tools, to help Africans
develop both technical and business skills for entrepreneurship and
improved employability. Training through the Afrika Academy will be
available starting in March at no cost to recent higher education
graduates, government leaders and the Microsoft partner community.
One of the first offline training sessions will take place with
Microsoft-managed partners in Ivory Coast in the coming months,
focusing on capacity building in business and technical skills for
Microsoft?s partners in Francophone West Africa.
Simultaneous launch events to kick off this new era in Africa are
taking place today in five locations spanning the continent: Cairo;
Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Lagos, Nigeria; Nairobi, Kenya; and
Johannesburg. In all locations except for Cairo, Microsoft will
also be hosting separate developer workshops in the coming weeks to
facilitate and accelerate the development of new Windows
applications for Africa, by Africans. |
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