Winners and finalists of this year’s Africa StartUp Cup will be receiving a series of prizes to help them further develop and scale their ventures.
Courtesy of Microsoft’s 4Afrika Initiative – which was launched to promote access to affordable technology, innovation and world-class skills – the prizes will include: Free Azure cloud services for three years with support for up to five developers, and access to Microsoft technologies including MSDN, Visual Studio and Office.
StartUp Cup, a partner to the U.S Department of State’s Global Entrepreneurship Program, is – a tested Business Model Accelerator Program, now running in over 68 countries worldwide.
Africa's maiden regional summit took place on April 29 at the iSpace Foundation in, Labone, – Accra, Ghana.
Speaking of behalf of Microsoft 4Afrika, Djiba Diallo, Startup Engagement Lead, commented:
”Our global mission is to empower every person and organisation on the planet to do more. Entrepreneurs, startups and SMEs play such a vital role in growing African economies and furthering local innovation. It’s in our best interests to invest in their productivity, giving them access to the cloud-based tools that help them to work more efficiently, stay relevant and scale across borders to take African innovation to the world.”
“We’re humbled with the partnership and support of Microsoft 4Afrika to empower more African entrepreneurs, who are part of the growing StartUp Cup , (Africa) network, with the skills and tools they need to scale their startups across Africa and also globally, while making a positive dent economically through their ventures”, commented Douglas Ogeto, Co-Organizer & Partnerships Lead for Africa.