The facility that houses Microsoft’s core teams dedicated to research, design, engineering, and innovation is also home to the Microsoft ADC Garage, a hub designed to foster and scale groundbreaking tech solutions in the continent. The team, led by the E&I department’s program managers, Louis Wajeiya and Kevin Okwako, as well as its Innovation Programs Coordinator, Lydia Akinyi, visited the garage where the greenLabs – JLA’s incubator program – incubatees were hosted by Microsoft Garage Lab Manager, GD Dhanjal and Microsoft Garage Lead-East Africa, Lydia Karanja.
The Garage exists to create solutions for Microsoft’s customers and to move its culture forward and demonstrate its effectiveness. It is meant to spread the values of openness and collaboration through facilitating the interactivity of interdisciplinary teams who work on interesting projects that may turn into actual Microsoft products rolled out into the real world.
The team had the invaluable opportunity to engage with Microsoft engineers, many of whom were former participants in other innovation challenges and have since transitioned to full-time roles at the company. Notably, the entire visiting cohort were past winners of the greenLabs Renewable Energy Innovation Challenge. Their current projects span a diverse range of renewable energy solutions, encompassing clean cooking, carbon capture, solar heating, and even the groundbreaking field of green ammonia.
Africa’s youth bulge presents an unprecedented opportunity for the continent’s transformation with entrepreneurship emerging as a powerful vehicle for young Africans to drive economic growth and create jobs. By embracing a mindset of problem-solving and opportunity creation – a culture fostered both at greenLabs and the Microsoft Garage – young African entrepreneurs can play a pivotal role in
addressing the continent’s unemployment crisis. Through collaboration, knowledge sharing, and the support of enabling environments, they can build thriving ecosystems that foster prosperity. As they forge ahead, it is essential to recognize their potential as agents of change and provide them with the necessary resources and support to succeed; efforts that Jacob’s Ladder Africa works tirelessly to achieve to ensure it activates 30 million jobs in the green economy by 2033.
