Microsoft 4Afrika has received an affirmative response from beneficiary teams and developers of the IoT (Internet of Things) & AI (Artificial Intelligence) pop up lab and series of events last month.
The pop up lab was able connect international experts with 90+ Kenyan developers and 8 African organizations, startups and established businesses such as Safaricom Mkopa Solar Davis & Shirtliff, Farmers Choice, Virtual City and SmartBig Things in imparting of AI and IoT skills and speed up development timelines on connected devices and services.
The local firms were able to engage with leading experts in tech engineering and trans-formative technologies towards the development of an IOT or AI product/solutions solving their unique challenges and even work on with them in preparing business plans for their connected solutions.
“In just 3 and half days the popup lab saved as two years of development and implementation time. Our already existing system took two years to build, but in a few days were able to build a solution in the cloud and create a real time dash board for our partners.” Desmond Roa Davis and Shirtliff
This was the first African popup lab that draws from the Microsoft IoT and AI Insider labs concept in USA, Germany and China.
“The devices are able to communicate directly with applications that have been developed then backed with our ERP (enterprise resource system) is a big plus for us were able to work faster, more efficiently and with more accuracy.” Erica Muga Senior Systems Administrator Farmers Choice
M-KOPA’s James Mwenja adds that “A deep-dive into AI with technical experts in cognitive services and bot framework helped us save eight weeks of development time and business operations time.”
With 54 countries and 1.25 billion people Africa has over 131 firms with over $ IBn in revenue the cloud is expected to support new firms and industries to promote economic growth on a macro and micro level enabling the next ‘unicorn’ startups and transforming emerging economies.
“Microsoft is committed to investing in Africa because of our profound belief in the potential power of this continent, and this is just one of our many engagements for unleashing digital transformation across Africa.” Amrote Abdella Regional Director of Microsoft 4Afrika