Microsoft initiative to empower Africa with new technology

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

"The Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative is built on the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate growth for Africa and can also accelerate technology for the world," said Fernando de Sousa, General Manager, Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative in a statement that was sent to the Observer.

 "We want to empower African youth, entrepreneurs, developers, business and civic leaders to turn great ideas into a reality that can help their community, their country, the continent and beyond."

By 2016, the Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative plans to have distributed millions of smart devices to African youths, 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.

In a move to empower 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 and find new business opportunities.

“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,” Fernando de Sousa said.

The hub is expected to open in April initially in South Africa and Morocco and will expand to other African markets over time.

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.

The Huawei 4Afrika phone, which is the first in what will be a series of smart devices designed "4Afrika," is targeting university students, developers and first-time smart phone users to ensure that they have affordable access to best-in-class technology to enable them to connect, collaborate, and access markets and opportunities online. To accelerate capacity building and skills development, Microsoft has established the Afrika Academy, an education platform leveraging both online and offline learning tools.

Training through the Afrika Academy will be made available starting in March freely to recent higher education graduates, government leaders and the Microsoft partner community.

Meanwhile, 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.

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.