Microsoft unveils new initiative to improve Africa’s global competitiveness

BusinessesMicrosoft Corporation has rolled out the Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative, a new effort through which the company will actively engage in Africa’s economic development to improve its global competitiveness.

By 2016, the Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative is expected to help place tens of millions of smart devices in the hands of African youth, bring one million African small and medium enterprises (SMEs) online, up-skill 100,000 members of Africa’s existing workforce, and help an additional 100,000 recent graduates develop skills for employability, 75 per cent of which Microsoft will help place in jobs.

This was contained in a release copied to the Ghana News Agency (GGA) in Accra on Thursday.

It quoted Fernando de Sousa, General Manager, Microsoft 4 Afrika Initiative as saying “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.

“The Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative is built on the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate growth for Africa, and Africa can also accelerate technology for the world”, he added.

The release said as a first critical step towards increasing the adoption of smart devices, Microsoft and Huawei would be introducing the Huawei 4Afrika – a full functionality Windows Phone 8 which would come pre-loaded with select applications designed for Africa.

The release said to help empower African SMEs, Microsoft announced a new online hub through which African SMEs would have access to free, relevant products and services from Microsoft and other partners.

“The hub will aggregate the available services which can help them expand their business locally, find new business opportunities outside their immediate geography, and help increase their overall competitiveness”, it said.

“As a ‘welcome offer,’ Microsoft will provide free domain registration for the period of one year and free tools for qualifying SMEs interested in creating a professional web presence. The hub is expected to open in April initially in South Africa and Morocco and will expand to other African markets over time.”

It added that Microsoft had established the Afrika Academy, an education platform leveraging both online and offline learning tools, to help Africans develop both technical and business skills for entrepreneurship and improved employability.

The release said that training through the Afrika Academy would be made 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 soon, focusing on capacity building in both business and technical skills for partners in francophone West Africa”, it said.

On the 4Afrika Initiative, it hinted that it would be tightly connected to Microsoft’s network of more than 10,000 existing partners in Africa today, a network it had built over 20 years of investing and operating on the Continent.

It said the 4Afrika Initiative would leverage these existing partnerships and create new ones across both the public and private sectors to help advance common goals and to create value for Africans.

Source: GNA

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