Africa is a rising global competitor in the technology industry with more traction in the global startups scene as a result of growing number of tech hubs, big investments, and fresh ideas.
With Microsoft’s continued commitment of granting seed funding, technical support and mentorship to fast-track the growth of startups to highlight Africa’s ‘future growth pole’, the Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, Kabelo
Kabelo Makwane
Kabelo Makwane
Makwane in an interview with Vanguard Tech news at the just concluded DEMO Africa that enabled startups from all over Africa to pitch their solutions before angel investors and IT buyers across the region said that African startups must create products that meet global standards.
He spoke at length in a number of initiatives Microsoft is doing to support the growth and development of innovative solutions among startups which he believes can change the world.
Excerpt:
Sponsorship of Demo Africa
DEMO Africa is the coming together of different stakeholders who are interested in seeing the evolution of innovation. People that are very interested in essentially investing and supporting the start-ups.
So in Microsoft, one of our key areas is how to enable start-ups in Nigeria through incubation programmes and essentially how we incubate them and help them to grow so that they in turn can contribute to job creation and help the economy. We have about 60 million small enterprises in the country and you know that unemployment is a big challenge in the country, so what we aim to do is to potentially contribute to the creation of more tech start-ups so that they in turn contribute positively to the alleviation of the unemployment scourge.
Market for start-ups
From what we have seen, there is actually a big gap in the market currently. This is where i think we can make meaningful impact because if you look at the big enterprises, the reality of it is that if you look at the banks, the telcos, and other major corporations, they are not going to be employing people in droves, instead the reverse will be the case. This is because as big corporations, they are always looking at how they can optimise cost by reducing overheads.
And so, we have to look up to the start-ups, because even government for instance, will not be contributing significantly to the eradication of unemployment.
Research has shown that when you begin to make investment in SMEs, this is when you will begin to make meaningful impact.
Investment in the startups
We have teamed up with few industry stakeholders and others that are of like minds. For instance, we have teamed up with USAID, and a few other stakeholders. There are a few other ventures capitalist, investors that essentially want to provide seed funding.
Beyond that, there are lots of others in the Demo Africa confer-ence that will be interested in helping these start-ups to move from a start-up face to running sustainable businesses. It is not a single handed thing for Microsoft. There are a number of partners who are con-investing with us in order to help these guys to be successful.
Our participation in DEMO Africa:
Our purpose is to focus on businesses that are innovative to create opportunities and to bring products and services into the market.
So, it is an opportunity for us to collaborate with the likes of AfriLabs, USAID, venture capitalists and other stakeholders.
As a platinum sponsor, it means that we have a commitment to seeing these start-ups through in terms of direct investment in their success and their partnerships with all the other stakeholders. So we are going to be investing very directly as Microsoft in some of these startups
It is to showcase what is possible and what innovations there can be. The idea behind this is to take this a step further because one of the challenges we are solving is that of unemployment. We are also trying to address the challenge of youth enjoyability, lack of unemployment opportunities in the market.
It goes to the next level where through our African investment. We are then able to invest in these start-ups where we are also able to incubate those start-ups and help them to invest in successful businesses that can employ people within the economy and contribute to alleviating the economic challenge of youth unemployment.
Specifically, we have had lots of experience within the context of Nigeria and other African countries where we have invested in a few tech start-ups. We want people to create economic opportunities using their innovations. So these start-ups’ idea is really about how to monetize and essentially about creating products that are of global standards.
Investment landscape for Africa
I believe that we are starting to see momentum in terms of more and more youths realizing the opportunities around creating mobile apps, creating companies that will deliver services leveraging the benefit of technology, innovations that could talk to agriculture, the financial services sector,among others. O
ne of the realizations in the Nigerian context after the rebasing is that the services sector was a significant contributor to overall GDP in the country. And so what is in the services sector apart from the financial services and legal services is also technology services, that is, in terms of how we consume technology.
So when you talk of landscape, we have lots of young minds who needs someone to take what they have, help them to actualise it, incubate it, make it sustainable and help them to actually create businesses and participate meaning-fully in the local economy.
Collaboration with AfriLabs
We have been collaborating with AfriLabs across the continent. Afrilabs is an important incubation centre for us that provide beyond skills to technology of which we are significantly contributing. But also they provide skills in terms of business like how people can put together a sustainable business plan, how to monetise and create a viable business out of an idea or something based on intellectual property.

Link ~> http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/10/microsoft-african-tech-startups-create-products-global-standards/#sthash.1wXMxjgo.dpuf