The Microsoft Mobility Summit was successfully held recently in Lagos to introduce tech savvy individuals to the Microsoft mobile-first and cloud-first world.

Kabelo Makwane

At the event that attracted capacity audience, the company’s Country Manager, Kabelo Makwane in this interview with Emeka Aginam with optimism predicted that the next Bill gate, Steve Jobs and the likes could come out from the Nigerian market.

Restating Microsoft’s commitment to unlock the economic opportunities in Nigeria and the rest of the African continent, he said that Nigeria should leverage on the potentials of young tech start-ups to build the economy.

Excerpts:

WHAT is the Microsoft Mobility Summit about?

The Microsoft Mobility Summit is an exhibition that aims to introduce participants to the Microsoft mobile-first and cloud-first world. The summit provides an invaluable opportunity to share in thought-provoking conversations with industry experts, Microsoft IT and Business Leadership and to foster relationships with peers who have similar technology and business interests.

One thing exciting about this event is that Nigeria is among the top mobile economies given the number of smart phones in the hands of many Nigerians. If you look at the penetration, it is not just phones but also tablets and other mobile devices. It means we need to leverage on the platform and the trend we see in this particular area which is mobility.

Offerings and capability

We ask some questions like what does mobility mean for this market, and what can people do with the devices already in their hands to become more productive and that would take the country forward. We are excited about it and it is also an opportunity for Microsoft to inform, advice, educate as well as showcase our offerings and capability which is quite extensive in the space from mobile device to mobile apps, mobile solutions and across the spectrum of our portfolio.

Also, the fact that all of this capabilities are enabled through cloud computing, where we have a lot of offerings to take to the market makes it even more exciting.

What should participants look forward to at the Mobility Summit?

We have brought together people that are experts in areas around mobility and solutions. We have brought our partners that would provide various mobile solutions, leveraging on the Microsoft platform.

We have also brought our original equipment manufacturer partners like Dell, HP, Asus among others who essentially sell what we call third party devices that we take to the market. So, we have brought a mix of people and our customers across multiple industries to include; financial services, manufacturing or retail etc.

The whole essence is for people to come together and share ideas, learn and interact on how to leverage on mobility as a platform to drive more business development, customer engagement, small scale businesses and start -ups to grow their business and that is really the essence of having an event like this.

In this platform, people can begin to share ideas on how to leverage on available mobile technology to run their businesses. You will appreciate that a small or medium enterprise does not have the financial capital nor the interest to start or begin to build a complex IT infrastructure and hire IT people to do things, leveraging platforms are there; cloud, mobile apps and mobile devices to run their business while they are on the goal to run their businesses.

Similarly, banks can begin to look into new customers and markets to leverage on mobile platform. Essentially a bank representative is working with a device that is enabled to capture data, open accounts at the same time is able to synchronize with the office. We create some interesting solutions for a lot of those institutions.

That is why the interest is quite vast in terms of the audience we have attracted here, and because everybody recognizes that there is an opportunity to become a mobile force economy.

What do you expect five years down the line?                                                                        It is a bit difficult to postulate that far but all I can say for now is that we have challenges reaching people in rural areas to offer them primary and basic health care services.

Opportunities for e-learning

We want situations where medical care professionals would have good technologies to administer medical services efficiently and competently through these platforms.We could call this tele-medicine or e-health as it were. There are also opportunities for e-learning. We have kids in rural areas who do not have access to libraries or the platforms on which they can have some knowledge and learn. If you start putting devices in their hands, you start putting capabilities that would enable them internet access which will translate into information that will educate and empower them. This is essential to creating a bright future for these ones and those are the type of scenarios I see that are very relevant in our market.So e-learning could replace the traditional means of distributing text books. In some cases before text books reach students, they are already outdated.

Even in the oil and gas, for instance you want to send field agent to go and investigate broken oil pipelines and take pictures in the spot and diagnose as well and communicate to the office via mobile technology that can enable them resolve the problem while online. These are the scenarios that really will start to make sense for our market.

What is the role of the government in all this?

Government remains an essential part in the space. There are a lot of interventions that government does and I know that the government is very focused. I can see quite a number of initiatives, huge amount of budgeting set aside to make meaningful interventions in the education and empowerment of young people. I think the reality is that government cannot do it alone; they need to partner with industries and stake holders to come with a solution to resolve some of these challenges.

What has microsoft’s experience been like in Nigeria?

Nigeria is very vibrant market .We have some smart minds and young developers coming on board. We should be taping into these potentials and harnessing from them because, it is not far-fetched to envision the situation where the next Bill gate, Steve Jobs and the likes come out of this market. There are a lot of IT partners that are playing in the Nigeria market, and their challenge is mobilizing these ecosystem so that we begin to also make sure we have the right kind of investment like; building schools capability so that we have proficient technical local people. We have done a lot in these areas of service and we continue to invest in this area of creating a broad skill set for everybody to benefit from.

Could you expound on Microsoft’s role in assisiting Nigerian start ups?

We have recognized the need for incubation. It is about how do you build sustainable businesses, help these start ups not just end up been start ups but rather help them to be successful. Microsoft has supported a lot of start-ups in the ecosystem and we will continue to build and encourage for a better economy.

What solutions are you providing for the banking sector?

Nigerian banking sector has been enjoying a lot of attention from Microsoft. For instance, we have 635 offices , and a lot of customers use it. We have a lot of customers that are adopting cloud technology and it is available today.We have cloud OS online, dynamics share online, which is for customer relationship management. So, we are lending a lot of our cloud and we have a lot of apps in our store and a lot of capabilities that are cloud based lending to the market similarly to the rest of the international scene.