Microsoft teaching, learning in Africa

Microsoft 4Afrika program is to develop business endeavor, vocational training, the leadership, the relations conditioned. It is billed as a program to strengthen the capacity of business and government of Africa A technology use. In the best case, but also it increases Microsoft.

Mariappan Anand spends his days in the data analysis tools Microsoft built largely designed for people like him. That is, employees accustomed to high-resolution monitors, internet lightning and amenities of a modern office park.In January, the 31-year-old software developer spent three weeks doing everything possible to help a different constituency: startups trying to get off the ground in Kampala, Uganda.

There, things like optimizing the distribution of an application for the iPhone is not exactly the same importance to ensure that the software can run smoothly if the Internet service cut. "Here, you have many resources. Talent Engineering, easy Internet" Mariappan said. "In developed countries, it does not take into account some of these factors."

The Mariappan trip was part of two years, the initiative Microsoft 4Afrika $ 75 million. The program MySkills4Afrika transported about 400 employees at Microsoft in two or three weeks time to customers in the countries of Africa to share their special skills, the development of software for marketing.

Business development effort, the training of the workforce leadership, public relations push, 4Afrika is classified as a program to strengthen the ability of companies and governments of the continent to use the technology. At best, it also improves the image of Microsoft and client list of the company expands.

"It is not philanthropy, it is not a charity," Fernando de Sousa, Microsoft's director of human resources for the Middle East and Africa and founder of the program director said. "We are investing in the continent, in order to allow economic development." Microsoft's investment in Africa began, as many US companies in South Africa, the largest and more of the continent's most industrialized economy. The company was one of the first companies in the United States to return to South Africa after Congress repealed the trade sanctions amid signs of a thaw in the racist abuse of forced apartheid.

De Sousa joined Microsoft in South Africa in 1992 and was in the team that in 2005, played a non-commercial strategy for the Americas, focusing on how technology can help achieve the development goals of the United Nations continent. In 2013, Microsoft announced an initiative 4Afrika three years, the commission of what De Sousa said it is the largest investment in development around the world outside China.

"In the background was the idea that we need to think of Africa in a different way," said de Sousa, born in Mozambique.The program has not been without its failure. The centerpiece of his early days, a force for the adoption of a low-cost, Windows-powered smartphones, "he did well," Winnie Karanu, a program manager with Microsoft in Kenya. This effort coincided with the global struggles for Microsoft to grow its small market share in smartphones amid stiff competition from Google and Apple.

More success, Karanu says, are training programs, internships for young people, a pilot to use the TV white space to expand the reach of the Internet, and MySkills4Afrika program.

Mariappan work in Uganda focuses on sharing his vision of BI applications, Microsoft relatively new tool for data analysis. Time passed with companies trying to make sense of sales data regarding agricultural products and helped build a startup mobile payment tools.
"My goal was to teach," he said. "But I learned a lot."

Eileen Chou, team leader IT support detailed Microsoft in Redmond, spent three weeks in Kenya in October, together with some other employees of Microsoft to train the IT department of the methods of the Kenya Red Cross and workflow how to make use of a grant of Microsoft software.

"We all kind of come to a realization that the fundamental issues are very similar," he said. "You always feel like you never have enough people to do everything, always wear multiple hats" He added: "all do it again in a heartbeat"