Kabelo Makwane, country manager, Microsoft Nigeria, holds BComm certificate from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and MBA from the University of the Witwatersrand.
Prior to his present role as country manager, Makwane served as public sector director in the Microsoft South Africa subsidiary.
He had worked as the regional sales manager, Cisco Systems; portfolio sales executive, Unisys; product manager/account manager, Datacentrix and software and media product manager, Storgate Africa.
Makwane in this interview with peter ugwu, said it was a time when Microsoft can achieve real economic impact in the country based on its focus on unlocking the economic opportunities of Africa.

Microsoft’s Contribution to the Paradigm Shift in Operations of Organizations
In a mobile-first, cloud-first world, Microsoft is committed to delivering the best cloud connected services on every device. 
For more than two decades, Microsoft Office has been the chosen productivity tool for consumers and businesses alike. 
Our innovation in mobile and cloud scenarios ensure that Office will be the productivity service of choice for many years to come, alternatives don’t compare.

Microsoft’s Strategy
Our strategy is one that says: We want to be the do more Company that enables people to be more; which essentially means enabling high value activities irrespective of the sector, or whether people are at home, on the move or at work.
I can say that our niche is in human capacity or skills development, retail or services, because we are servicing the spectrum of the entire market.
Sectors like the public, private, consumer or enterprise, have our backing; our broad portfolio of products allows us to do that with comprehensive solution offerings in the experiences we can enable through our proportions.
 
BYOD Era and Helping CIOS Make It Happen
Microsoft helps enterprises address BYOD, so employees can use the devices and services they love and IT can protect company data.
Our approach is more than mobile device management. It starts with employee identity, trust, security and includes devices, apps and cloud services.
While Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) can bring potential benefits to organizations, and it also creates specific challenges, particularly regarding device management, the segregation of data and security.
There must be a balance of establishing clear policies and the right services: Companies in Nigeria need to put the proper device management systems and infrastructure in place to ensure that their company is not put at risk and at the same time benefit from a more engaged and motivated workforce by making devices and company services conveniently available.
Further, policies need to be implemented to ensure workers are using devices and services that will best enable them to do their jobs effectively.
 
How Has Microsoft Contributed to Skills Development in Africa
This is one of biggest focal areas, because it is typically the biggest challenge we see in unleashing and realizing the potential of the Nigerian and Africa’s ecosystem.
Broadening the skills pool is something very core to our strategy for Africa. One of the key pillars of our investing in Africa is creating 21st Century skills and those that are exportable, at par with any other skills globally.
What are we doing right now? We have launched an internship program; we have 17 interns in our Lagos office on a twelve month program.
We are planning to expand the program. These interns may not all end up only employed by Microsoft. We will make them available once they sort of on top of their program.
They will be available to our channel partners or customer who wants to employ them, because they would have become highly skilled.
We are partnering broadly with over 2000 partners in identifying strategies in which we can drive partner enablement to broaden the skills pool.
We will continue to build capacity for these partners to continue to deliver to clientele throughout the Nigerian market.
The other thing we look at is how do we tap into the academic institutions and partner with them. For example in Anambra State, we are setting up ICT Academics together with the Academic Institutions in conjunction with Anambra state.
These are ongoing projects. Essentially, we are looking at ways in which we can expand these projects to reach more youth.
In looking to reach as many people as possible the downstream economic impact could become more evident.
 
Various Programmes under 4afrika Initiative and their Impact
Microsoft and its partners work closely with organizations and people across Africa to fully harness the power of innovation to meet the needs of our countries and communities.
Through flexible solutions, programs and partnerships and a business model that puts people first.Our objective isn’t innovation for innovation sake, but innovation that make real impact for a better Africa.
A year after the launch of this initiative, in terms of collective African impact, we have not only laid much of the groundwork for what we will do in 2014 and beyond, but we have also successfully rolled out four White Spaces projects to provide low-cost, solar powered broadband to communities in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa, not just that, we have signed cooperation agreements with four innovation hubs in Africa, including CcHUB in Nigeria, DTBi in Tanzania, iHub& m:lab in Kenya, and AfriLabs, the pan-African hub network. CcHUB is Nigeria’s first innovation lab and pre-incubation space designed to catalyze creative social technology ventures.
Also, we kicked off the 4Afrika Scholarship Program providing 1,000 scholarships to young African students through our partnerships with the University of the People (online university) and Regenesys Business School (South Africa).
Microsoft further introduced the 4Afrika Advisory Council to ensure the 4Afrika initiative does in fact help Africa become and remain globally competitive for the benefit of Africa’s people.
We also announced additional four youth members to address issues facing youth in Africa, one of which is from Nigeria (Chude Jideonwo).
Today, we have provided innovation grants (seed funding via Microsoft Ventures as well as technical support and mentorship via 4Afrika) for five African startups including access.mobile LLC, Africa 118,  Gamsole, Kytabu and Save & Buy, two of which are Nigerian (Gamsole and Save &Buy) .
Through the 4Afrika Interns, we have engaged over 17 interns from Nigeria to work with the Microsoft setup locally. With the aim to give them exposure to world class skills and the opportunity to better equip themselves.
The Initiatives Will Spark Intellectual Property Developments, But The Issues Of Rights And Protection, How Is Microsoft Faring In This Regard?
As a corporate entity we are working with regulatory institutions locally to provide an enabling environment for innovations and protection of their rights on their inventions, we’ve also embarked on some awareness creation campaigns through our “Play It  Safe” Campaign to further drive home our message of the need to protect the rights of Intellectual Property.

Nigeria’s Rebased Economy
Perhaps, the most imposing revelations emerging from the rebasing result is the fact that the structure of the Nigerian economy is changing.
The economy is now shown to be driven largely by the services sector, which accounts for 53 percent of the GDP (vs. 29% pre-rebasing).
For the ICT Industry we see a situation where Cloud adoption in Nigeria is expected to grow from 36% to 80% by end of 2014 and with a purported $50 B foreign investment into the ICT sector from International organizations, we would continue to see the IT industry in Nigeria soar in the months.