MICROSOFT TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR ENTREPRENEURS
Microsoft partners with TEF to provide entrepreneurs with technical support and other resources for improving their businesses.
Seeing entrepreneurship as an element for economic and social growth of a country, Microsoft and Tony Elemelu Foundation (TEF) have formed a partnership known as 4Afrika Initiative which aims at providing entrepreneurs in the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme with the needed training, ICT tools and resources required to modernise their businesses, create more value proposition and increase their customer base.
According to the General Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, Akin Banuso, “Microsoft 4Afrika and the Tony Elumelu Foundation share a common goal to accelerate economic and social development by promoting entrepreneurship.”
The world is becoming more digital everyday and competition in the business sector is ever-growing, for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME’s) to survive in this digital era, they need to be abreast of all the relevant technologies and ICT skills and make they are been integrated into their businesses.
Research has shown that “SMEs who adopt this kind of modern IT have seen 15 percent faster revenue growth than those not using it.”
The Microsoft 4Afrika initiative will provide entrepreneurs in the TEF Entrepreneurship programme with “access to cloud-based software, online support and technology through BizSpark; access to information and markets through the Biz4Afrika platform, where SMEs can trade with similar-sized organisations.”
Other benefits from the Initiative includes technical training on Microsoft technologies and platforms, online business and technology training through the Microsoft Virtual Academy, access to Microsoft experts for virtual and in-person mentorship through the MySkills4Afrika programme, and access to the Interns4Afrika programme.
Parminder Vir OBE, CEO of Tony Elumelu Foundation, praised the programme as “a win-win situation for both companies” and continued to numerate benefits of the programme as including mentoring, business training, access to seed capital funding and a membership into the TEF Africa-wide Network.
Also recounting some of the benefits of the programme was a TEF Entrepreneurship Programme beneficiary, Adeniyi Olayemi, who said “the training I received through the Foundation helped me to refine my business idea and then produce a successful proposal, then once we received access to Microsoft’s Azure software, I was able to close on a deal.”
About US$5.1 million have been generated from the over 55 local start-ups that have received funding from this Innovation Grant Programme since 2013.