Microsoft has announced a multimillion rand investment to create economic opportunities for South Africa through an Equity Equivalent Investment Programme (EEIP), which the Minister of Communications, Stella Ndabeni- Abrahams has welcomed.

The investment aims to position South Africa as one of the leading Information and Communications Technology (ICT) markets on the African Continent. Added to this, Microsoft recently  delivered cloud services on the continent thanks to its new Azure data centres.

“The investment is important, particularly within the context of providing opportunities for small and medium businesses to access affordable data management and cloud services, as well as for digi-techs to leverage this infrastructure to provide new innovative digital services,” said Ndabeni-Abrahams to SA News.

The firm added that its newly opened enterprise-grade data centre in the region will ensure world-class cloud infrastructure that will power emerging cloud, AI and edge computing innovations across the continent.

“The combination of Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure with the new regions in Africa will increase economic opportunity for organisations in Africa, as well as connect business across the globe through improved access to cloud and internet services,” added Microsoft corporate vice president of Azure Networking, Yousef Khalidi.

[Source – SA News]