Botswana
Innovation Hub (BIH) continues to make bold strides towards the economic development
and competitiveness of the country by forging partnerships that create new
scientific and technological business opportunities and adding value to
existing companies. Commenting on the company’s efforts to attract innovative
companies and institutions to set up in the Hub, Chief Executive Officer Alan
Boshwaen said, “The Company has moved beyond the phase of setting up and is now
creating synergies with similar organisations across the world.” He said technology and science
research based companies across the world are showing great interest in setting
up in Botswana to take advantage of the Hub.
Boshwaen was speaking at a Press Conference to
introduce Microsoft General Manager for Africa, Fernando
De Souza and launch the Microsoft 4Africa initiative which seeks to actively
engage Microsoft
Corporation of the USA in Africa’s
economic development and improve the company’s global competiveness. The
4Africa initiative builds on the BIH, Microsoft Corporation collaboration
which has seen the establishment of Microsoft Innovation Centre (MIC) within
BIH. MIC was officially launched by His Honour the former Vice President Lt.
Gen. Mompati Sebogodi Merafhe in December 2011 with the objective to develop
advanced ICT expertise and innovations in Botswana and systematically
facilitate technology transfer to enhance ICT content creation and job
creation.
Through this smart partnership
a localised Global Microsoft Initiative aimed at empowering young people around
the world with relevant ICT skills that enable them to be employable and to
start their own businesses was recently launched in March 2013. The Youth
Empowerment pilot program is a BIH and MIC collaboration that includes the
Department of National Internship Program and is aimed at facilitating
internship opportunities and providing specialized skills training for the
interns.
Speaking at the press
conference, De Souza said, “Microsoft has more than 20
years of doing business in Africa and as the world awakens to the promise of
Africa, Microsoft has risen to the challenge and wants to invest in that
promise. The company launched the 4Africa initiative as a way of helping create
jobs and enabling further collaboration through technology, in order to accelerate
intra-African trade and investment and support Africa’s emergence as an
increasingly relevant and influential global market force.”
He said, “Earlier this year,
the company launched the 4Afrika initiative as a multi-year investment in the
African continent. The initiative has three core pillars of focus – innovation, world-class skills and access. These pillars were chosen
because they were the common focus areas of the majority of African governments
looking to accelerate economic development.”
The 4Afrika Initiative is an
effort through which Microsoft will actively engage in Africa’s economic
development to improve its global competitiveness. It aligns the company’s
growth to that of the continent, by empowering every African with a great
idea for a business or an application and to turn that idea into a reality
which in turn can help their community, their country, or even the continent at
large.
De
Souza said the BIH, Microsoft collaboration is continually exploring dynamic new
ways of extending and building on the partnership to maximize its potential
impact and in adopting world innovations that are relevant to local needs. “In
this regard, we are working out the fine details of a new three way pilot
project partnership that will involve the globally renowned University of
Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the United States of America. The new pilot program
shall create efficient low cost communication using a new technology called
Dynamic Spectrum Access through free TV channels (Spectrum). The free TV
Spectrum is called “White Space” and the solution is commonly known as TV white
space broadband,” he said.
Fielding questions from the
floor, Boshwaen informed the media that TV white space facilitates delivery of
broadband access to places that currently lack electricity and telecom network
deployment. He said key national stakeholders such as Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (BOCRA) who are
critical to the successful implementation of this initiative and have been
consulted to ensure full alignment.
De
Souza sited
instances where the 4Afrika Initiative has been introduced with projects designed to drive
one or more of the core pillars. In Kenya and Tanzania, the initiative introduced TV
white spaces pilots together with those governments and local Internet service providers (ISPs), to
deliver high speed broadband access to sparsely populated rural areas, to
campus environments, to home users and to small medium business owners.
In Kenya, the aggressive goal
set by the government, which the initiative is actively working to help achieve
with TV white spaces, is to get 80% of the population connected to high speed
Internet within the next 2 years.
In Egypt and South Africa, the initiative
created “App Factories” which are staffed by paid student interns and designed
to accelerate the creation of relevant apps for Africans, by Africans. More
than 400 apps have been created to-date, and the interns are cranking out
approximately 90 new apps every month.
Microsoft has also introduced
the 4Afrika Academy, a training program targeting Microsoft partner community
and government leaders to help them get the skills they need to take their
businesses and legislative agendas, respectively, to the next level. In the
months since launch, more than 1100 people across 14 African countries have
already been trained.
Microsoft is also running
4Afrika DevCamps which are week long training sessions for developers to help
them learn how to build an app or a business on the Microsoft platform.
DevCamps have ran in Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Tunisia and Nigeria to-date,
touching around 1100 developers, and plans are afoot to accelerate this with 2
DevCamps a month in various countries on the continent.
These projects and many more
have all been designed to help Microsoft deliver on three big commitments the
company made at launch, that is, through 4Afrika, in the next three years
Microsoft would deliver tens of millions of smart devices into the hands of
young Africans; help 1 million African SMEs get online to improve their
competitiveness and train hundreds of thousands of Africans with skills for
entrepreneurship and employability.
Boshwaen said he was happy
that the Microsoft 4Africa initiative will be accomplished in the framework of
the BIH mandate of attracting
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