Microsoft’s Chief Operating / Chief Marketing Officer for Emerging Markets of Middle East and Africa, Chrystele Dumont, fits perfectly to the old sage “the dynamite never comes in a big package”
At first sight, one would almost look beyond her, in search of who occupies the exalted office, but when you engage her on 4th industrial revolution, data development and the skill sets that can give Africans a chance in the new revolution, it becomes easily understand able why Microsoft would combine two top positions for a woman so simply built in size and frame.
Beyond her beauty, Dumont has got the future sorted out in her head. And , how West Africa, particularly, Nigeria , could fit into that future, is in her fingertips.
What does it feel like, combining two top positions like COO and CMO for a company such as Microsoft?
My role is mainly making sure that from the solution that we are proposing to our customers and partners, we are having the right plan to serve them; both the top organizations and the small and medium businesses.
I am also in charge of driving the market team to learn our plans. I will say, the interesting part of the challenge is really to be sure we are providing the right resources, the right skills needed to upscale them. I am at the centre of connecting the dots between all of these.
Digital facilitators like Microsoft are at the centre of the much talked about 4th industrial revolution, what does it have for a growing digital economy like Nigeria?
I strongly believe that for Africa and indeed Nigeria, actually the 4th industrial revolution is a key vector of economic growth. For example, with technology like Artificial Intelligence, AI, by 2020 more than two million jobs will be created within the Middle East and Africa. That really empowers economic growth. I also believe that with these potentials of implementing digital information and across Africa with different customers, Africa has the potential to leapfrog some steps that other markets have passed through. It can really solve some very pressing challenges that African markets are currently facing, like how to optimize agriculture based on the sun sets, crops, the frequency, weather and how to use the analysis of those data to not only predict better planting season, but generally, optimise the agricultural sector.
Where will Microsoft’s competence in the emerging revolution, impact on a country like Nigeria?
We are across all the sectors. For example, in Nigeria, we are using our technologies to help Sterling bank leverage the richness of their data to understand the customer better. They are able to get a better insight of the customer’s profile, including who the customer is and what the customer requires. This helps the bank to make the right offering to the customers. After using some of our technologies which are based on the Azzure platform, they have seen a significant increase in efficiency and as well in growth of their services.
For a young digital economy like Nigeria, growth is systematic. Do we need industrial revolution or data revolution, first?
For us, it’s just to reposition what industrial revolution is bringing, and why data is part of it. So what the first industrial revolution provides is the test tools of technology that are able to do things that were, before, not possible at human level. Today’s technology revolves around the cloud which enables cost-effective and very powerful computing capacity.
To your question, it could be said that data is at the centre. Data is what will make the digital transformation possible; meaning, if we’re able to collate data and connect with cloud computing power and artificial intelligence services that are analysing these data, extracting some insights in models, in patterns, then we can predict better. In any industry this model of prediction can be very powerful to anticipate when there are some issues or obviously be more efficient, more productive or even for general growth.
How ready is Microsoft to enable technologies that’ll see to these predictions?
Fully ready, and already deploying in all sectors. For instance, we help airline operators maintain their aircrafts by deploying our IoT services to enable them have a full map of the aircraft and the maintenance data, issues, and challenges. By so doing, they are able to optimize checks before the aircraft embarks on each travel. So, what happens in this instance is that instead of waiting for the challenge, they are able to take pre-emptive approach.
There are many examples of this in the continent within Middle East and Africa where we’re really helping our customers to deliver services and make powerful impact. Another example is a Kenya-based start-up, delivering solar power to households. We have supported the start-up from inception and today, they have leveraged our Azzure services to grow and optimize the services they’re delivering to households in Kenya.
Skill appears the connecting factor between data revolution and digital revolution. Do you think Nigeria has got the right skills to go into digital revolution? I will say Nigeria and Africa are progressing on this. I will even tell you that outside Africa, there’s a lot of digital scarcity in those technologies we are talking about.
So it’s not an African or Nigerian problem, it’s a worldwide problem. Just to give you a bit of data, we know that through this digital revolution, there’s a lot of things that are going to be automated which is probably going to impact some jobs, the ones that are repetitive or low. It’s estimated by the world economic forum, that 66 million jobs will be eliminated by 2025. However, through the digital revolution, 133 million jobs could also be created. But that’s where skill is required. Today, 60 percent of the young graduates that are unemployed are mainly because of lack of skills.
Where does Microsoft come in?
At Microsoft, we have a very strong mission on providing skills, across ages, to markets we are operating in. So we have different programmes for our own customers. We have launched a skill initiative where we actually come to our customers and plan with them based on their own project, based on their technology experiences and digital transformation journeys. It’s a customized initiative. We have a plan where we sign up top management of companies, support and deliver the skills to them. They get certified at the end of those training courses.
For our partners, we have what we call the partner accelerator framework which is Bootcamp on online courses to get them properly immersed and experienced in our technologies. We also have Cloud Society, a platform where you have free online trainings on the technology of Microsoft where people can go on demand, and when they can.
We have the For Africa Initiative, which is a set of program themes and resources that are dedicated to the development of our markets, through skills, and as well, deliver to startups, fresh graduates, people that want to work in technology skill labs, real life experience of using technology. We’re also trying to find a way, not only to get people skilled but also to offer them job placements. We actually are doing a lot of those initiatives at different levels.
Nigerian economy is practically run by the SMEs. How flexible are these technologies to them, because that’s the easiest route for your initiatives to make impact?
We are not focusing only on the elite or the blue-chip companies; actually, one of my mandates in my role is to be able to make sure we are reaching out to the SME businesses, which are more than 95 percent of each market. We actually know that this is also where the potential economic growth is coming from. We have different products that are tailored to SMEs.
From a global perspective, we do take into account that our products need to serve from large to SMEs. How will digital transformation impact the workspace tomorrow? Digital transformation will push Nigeria to have more growth.
It will come with a fresh generation of technologies, new workforce with different habits. In Nigerian, there’s a lot of willingness to leverage these technologies. The gap is really around skilling and we are helping to re-skill the current workforce to adopt the technology of today, to be ready of a new way of working.
How can we change the mentality of HR to accepting that workers can work from anywhere?
This is exactly one of the things we have been looking at as the key success of the digital transformation. But that is not something that can happen overnight. Nature has a very big role in doing that. But we are also taking some steps to influence our customers to drive the change.
What kind of flexible regulations should be in place for us to get to where we are going faster?
I think the government in Nigeria have done a lot progress on that because we have worked with them in terms of modernising the policy, adopting new technology in the space of the cloud, and even in the government there’s some form of support to use technology in enabling decisions. For any government to embrace digital transformation, it needs a careful policy around data.
How data is being collected, stored, used and for what purpose, requires the law. Where there’s no law, the will is vague. So, I do believe that there’s still some work to be done but the process of work so far done has been in the right direction.
Source: Vanguard
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