REDMOND, WA, February 5, 2013/ -- Microsoft Corporation (http://www.microsoft.com) today introduced the Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative (http://microsoft4afrika.com/english),
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 plans to help place tens of millions of
smart devices in the hands of African youth, bring 1 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 percent of which
Microsoft will help place in jobs. (For web-based video content in English, with reporter commentary or without, please click here (http://microsoft4afrika.com/english). French, Arabic and Portuguese video content will be available later today)
“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, Microsoft 4Afrika
Initiative. “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.”
As
a first critical step toward increasing the adoption of smart devices,
Microsoft and Huawei are introducing the Huawei 4Afrika – a full
functionality Windows Phone 8 which will come pre-loaded 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.
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, high-speed, 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 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
white space technologies. These pilots will be used to encourage other
African countries to accelerate legislation that would enable this white
spaces technology to deliver on the promise of universal access for the
African Continent. (See related release (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Feb13/02-04WhitespacesPR.aspx), blog (http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2013/02/04/bringing-low-cost-off-the-grid-broadband-access-to-rural-kenya.aspx) and video (http://www.microsoft.com/africa/4afrika/white_spaces_project.aspx).
To
help empower African SMEs, Microsoft announced a new 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 them expand their business locally,
find new business opportunities outside their immediate geography, and
help increase their overall competitiveness. 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.
To
accelerate capacity building and skills development, Microsoft has
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. Training through the Afrika Academy will 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 in the coming months, focusing on
capacity building in both business and technical skills for our partners
in francophone West Africa.
The
4Afrika Initiative will be tightly connected to Microsoft’s network of
more than 10,000 existing partners in Africa today, a network it has
built over 20 years of investing and operating in the Continent. The
4Afrika Initiative will 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. Together with our
partners, Microsoft has initiated various other efforts in recent months
as part of the Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative, including:
• AppFactory
(South Africa (https://www.facebook.com/TheAppFactory?fref=ts) and
Egypt): Microsoft is hiring 30 paid student interns to staff the
AppFactory – centers to which the public can submit requests for
Africa-relevant Windows applications (Windows 8 or Windows Phone). These
requests are being crowd-sourced for voting, and the most popular ideas
are assigned development resources to get the app built and launched
into the Windows Store. Already, 73 Windows apps and 39 Windows Phone
apps have been built by the AppFactory teams, and at full capacity, the
teams plan to contribute around 90 new apps to the Windows Store per
month.
• Nokia and Windows Phone user training
(Kenya and Nigeria): Microsoft has established agreements with
Safaricom in Kenya and Bharti Airtel in Nigeria to accelerate local
adoption of the Nokia Lumia 510 and Nokia Lumia 620 Windows Phones. In
these markets, more than 90 percent of phones sold are feature phones,
so through these agreements, Microsoft is funding in-store training for
consumers who purchase these Nokia Lumia models on how the data plan
works and its benefits, to help make these smartphones better understood
and therefore more desirable for consumers.
• Female empowerment portal
(North Africa): This portal targeted at North African women will launch
in March as an offshoot of the MasrWorks
(http://masrworks.com/Intro/Welcome.aspx) IT skills portal. It is
designed to empower young women to play a leadership role in their
communities, build their skills and self-esteem and introduce new models
for self-employment. It will provide IT skills training and also softer
skills training on topics including leadership, self-confidence and
interviewing, as well as the mentorship needed to build a long-term
career in technology. The mentorship will be provided via a sustained
engagement between Microsoft, our partners, a local NGO, and the
beneficiaries to support them in career building and to plan their role
in society as female leaders.
“We
believe there has never been a better time to invest in Africa and that
access to technology -- particularly cloud services and smart devices
-- can and will serve as a great accelerator for African
competitiveness,” said Jean-Philippe Courtois, President of Microsoft
International. “The launch of Windows 8 and many other new products in
the coming months represent a New Era for Microsoft Corporation, which
we believe will redefine the technology industry globally. These
additional investments under the 4Afrika banner will help define our
company’s New Era in Africa.”
Simultaneous
launch events to kick off this New Era in Africa are being held today
in five locations spanning the Continent: Cairo, Egypt; Abidjan, Ivory
Coast; Lagos, Nigeria; Nairobi, Kenya; and Johannesburg, South Africa.
In all locations except for Egypt, Microsoft is also hosting separate
developer workshops in the coming weeks to facilitate and accelerate the
development of new and innovative Windows applications for Africa, by
Africans.
Distributed by the African Press Organization on behalf of Microsoft Corporation.