At DEMO Africa, Microsoft Corp announced a strategic cooperation agreements with three incubator organizations including: CcHUB in Nigeria, DTBiin Tanzania and AfriLabs, the pan-African hub network, across the African continent to enable startups, innovators and Africa’s developer community to grow their skills and build businesses with Microsoft technologies.
More on the agreement can be found here, but an interest Q&A session followed after and can be read below:
Q: Can incubator organizations across Africa apply to be part of this program?
A: Any interested incubator is welcome to reach out to us directly via africa@microsoft.com.
Q: How much is Microsoft spending on this investment?
A: We are not disclosing a specific dollar amount, but it suffices to say that Microsoft is deeply invested in developing highly impactful programs for the African youth and SMEs through these collaborations.
Q: How does this partnership map to the all up 4Afrika Initiative goals?
A: Microsoft 4Afrika is focused on helping accelerate economic development and improve competitiveness in Africa. By working with these technology hubs and incubation centers, we are supporting the growth of African SMEs through access to technology, skills development and Microsoft experts, and by helping those with truly competitive solutions to scale the world via the Microsoft Store.
Q: How did you decide on these three organizations? Was there an application process?
A: These three organizations are best-in-class incubators and hubs, all of which had expressed interest in developing programs with Microsoft to empower their developers & startups. There was no formal application process, but we certainly did our due diligence to confirm that all three were doing fantastic work with startups and SMEs in their communities. And because it is essentially a network organization, partnering with AfriLabs was a great way for us to support requests coming from across the continent, and scale as far as possible to reach as many African startups and SMEs as possible.
Q: Do the organizations have to pay anything to receive Microsoft’s support?
A: No
Q: How does this program compare with the Microsoft Ventures partnership program?
A: The Microsoft Ventures program is targeting accelerators and will be supporting in a deeper engagement the startups hosted there. These collaborations are targeting technology hubs and incubators and supporting the breadth developer and startup community.
BONUS: Microsoft Enters Into Cooperation Agreements To Accelerate African Innovation
