This week, Microsoft’s 4Afrika Initiative delivered a three-day immersion training for over 15 developers from different ICT spaces and universities in Kigali at kLab innovation space. Joseph Manzi, a developer at Afnov Ltd, says the training was different from previous ones as he got a full day of exciting and deep dive technical instruction on Windows Azure platform. “The training was delivered by an experienced technical specialist and with this, we can easily buildapp stars and enable them to play a big role in the ICT ecosystem,” he noted, adding that he was trained to be able to train others and pass on the knowledge. The programme aims at equipping a special group of developers with the world-class technical skills needed to build highly relevant, immersive applications and cloud-based solutions. This group of developers will be able to deliver awareness events and develop applications that can be hired or interned at startups. The immersion program also falls in line with the 4Afrika goal of empowering every African who has a great idea for a business or an application and to turn that idea into a reality which in turn can help their community, country and the continent. The Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative is built on the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate. Why Microsoft Windows Azure? JovitaNsoh, an architect at Microsoft WW Data Center and Cloud Infrastructure Center of Excellence which carried out the training, says the programme teaches people the emerging technologies of Cloud Computing and the Windows Azure platform. “Cloud computing is the new thing in the IT industry. Microsoft launched their vision of cloud based computing and storage under the name ‘Azure Service Platform’. Azure provides rentable computing and storage facilities and offers all these services as HTTP addressable resources,” he explains. To put that in the language everyone understands, this base infrastructure allows developers to build solutions on top of highly scalable and manageable resources that they can easily pay for as they grow or cut down cost as their sales decline. Furthermore, the training provides a number of “higher order” services that also run on top of the Azure infrastructure. This includes SQL Azure - a fully functional SQL Server in the cloud as well as services to bridge the gap between on-premise and cloud facilities. Companies of all sizes are using and benefiting from Windows Azure in Latin America, including Teletica in Costa Rica, Saberes in Colombia and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and it’s time to add Rwanda to the list.
