[Africa] Microsoft says technology vital to cut poverty

from The Angola Press

African women have high potentials of growing their small-scale businesses into bigger information technology-based companies through the innovative use of emerging technologies, a visiting corporate executive said here Tuesday.

Microsoft president for Africa, Dr Chieck Modibo Diarra, said his company was passionate that Africa held massive growth potentials for women to turn their small-scale enterprises into big businesses through the use of available market outlets.

He said African women traders should have access to the different technologies available to market their produce and bargain for the best prices available in the international markets to enable their businesses to grow.

"Technology is a powerful tool that can allow... the entire African continent to show tremendous economic growth in the coming years, but if we only can address the divide between those that can benefit from technology and those that currently can`t," Diarra noted.

"Microsoft is doing its best to bring to the attention of the community what we have got for their own benefit, we would like to see the emergence of local Information Communication Technology (ICT) based companies," Diarra told journalists here.

Diarra, who is in Nairobi to address the Youth Empowerment Summit on job-creation within the fast-growing ICT industry, said Microsoft shares the UN Millennium Development Goals, urging cooperation with the private sector to harness technology.

The Malian, who has recently been appointed to preside over the African operations of the leading software programmes maker, said efforts to popularise local languages as part of computer operating systems was geared towards creating an ICT market in Africa.

"We are asking the youth in Africa to take advantage of the new programmes we are launching to make tailor-made software programmes, this is part of the work we are doing to encourage the production of community programmes," Diarra said.