Microsoft Corp plans Long-term Investment in Africa of $100m to Nigeria and Kenya

A global tech giant, Microsoft Corp, would invest $100 million to open its first Africa Development Centre (ADC) with sites in Nigeria and Kenya over the next five years.

Almost three decades after Microsoft opened its first offices in Africa, the tech giant has launched its first ADC with two initial sites in Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria.

The ADC would serve as a

premier centre of engineering for Microsoft, where world-class African talent can create solutions for local and global impact.

“The ADC will be unlike any other existing investment on the continent. It will help us better listen to our customers, develop locally and scale for global impact. Beyond that, it’s an opportunity to engage further with partners, academia, governments and developers – driving impact in sectors important to the continent, such as FinTech, AgriTech and OffGrid energy.

“The ADC supports Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more. The ADC is the first Global Development Centre in Africa with a combined expected investment of US $100 million over the first five years of operation.

“At Microsoft, we’re very fortunate to have played a part in realising this potential, building strong partnerships to accelerate digital transformation and create sustained societal impact. A big milestone for this investment came earlier this year, as we opened Africa’s first hyper-scale datacentres in South Africa, promoting business innovation in the cloud,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft said it would hire more than 100 local engineers to work in the new Africa facility in both countries to customise its applications for the African market and to develop new ones for the continent and beyond.

The tech giant added that graduates would have access to the ADC to build a relevant and meaningful career in data science, AI, mixed reality, application development and many more.

“Our desire is to recruit exceptional engineering talent across the continent that will build innovative solutions for global impact. 

This also creates opportunities for engineers to do meaningful work from their home countries and be plugged into a global engineering and development organisation,” the statement said.