Finally, Microsoft Is Bringing Development Center to Lagos, Hiring Dozens

Microsoft seems to be putting deep focus on Nigeria. It reported weeks ago that it was opening an AI research unit in Lagos. Now, it is going to also build development centers in Africa with Lagos as one of the centers. The company plans to spend $100 million in the next five years to build the development centers in partnerships with local partners and governments. Microsoft also plans to hire in Lagos and Nairobi, another development center, about 100 full-time developers by the end of 2019, and expand the number to 500 by Q4 of 2023.

Microsoft Corp.  plans to spend more than $100 million over five years to open its first development centers in Africa to work with local partners and governments, as well as hire engineering talent.

Initial sites will be in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, and Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. The software giant plans to hire 100 full-time developers at the two sites by the end of this year and expand to 500 by the end of 2023, Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday.

The Redmond, Washington-based company plans to use the sites to recruit African engineers to work in areas such as cloud services, which use artificial intelligence and applications for mixed reality – where customers use goggles to project 3-D images onto the real world

This is looking better here – they used to send salespeople. Now, we are getting engineers and technical fellows that will build AI and Mixed Reality technologies in Lagos.

The current marginal GDP growth in Nigeria is largely due to technology – let us keep it going. Without telecoms and startups, Nigeria will possibly be on recession. So, technology is playing a major role, and as entities like Microsoft come onboard, we will see more growth in the economy.

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