Somet is a Partner Development Manager within Microsoft`s Africa Initiatives (Microsoft 4Afrika) his role is to identify, qualify, onboard, and enable strategic, new partners to develop solutions on the Microsoft platform.
He is also accountable for driving the performance of the portfolio of partners by business priority.
Somet Kipchilat sits at the forefront of the fastest growing technology industry and market, as a startup engagement manager for Sub-Saharan Africa under Microsoft`s Africa Initiative (4Afrika). He plays a key role in representing the company externally within the Startup and developer ecosystem on the continent, and advocates on Microsoft’s work on several critical issues around technology including access, skills, privacy, security, accessibility.
He has spent the last few years driving Microsoft`s ISV Partner and startup engagements, helping position Microsoft as a market leader in the cloud space across the African continent. A passionate cloud architect with deep industry knowledge in technology, he has worked with over 500 startups and partners across several markets to build solutions on the cloud, that have both a local and global impact.
Throughout his 6 years at Microsoft, he has built a reputation for developing programs and engagements to empower developers, evangelizing developer tools across enterprises, startups, and student developer audiences. He works closely with startups to build business strategies, incubate new business models based on technologies that have built on top of Microsoft cloud services, and to scale those across different markets. Somet holds board advisory positions in a number of organizations across East Africa and the United Kingdom.
Somet is a valued conference and professional speaker on not only Microsoft technology and programs but also digital transformation, data protection, data privacy and cloud governance, presenting in a number of conferences and industry events to both technical and business audiences. He also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in IT from Jomo Kenyatta University and several industry certifications in both technical and business areas.
Company Bio : Microsoft 4Afrika
In 2013, Microsoft launched its 4Afrika Initiative. We started investing in start-ups, partners, small-to-medium enterprises, governments and youth on the African continent. Our focus has been on delivering affordable
access to the internet, developing skilled workforces and investing in local technology solutions. Africa has the potential to lead the technology revolution – and so we’re empowering those with the right ideas to drive economic development, inclusive growth and digital transformation.
Watch Somet’s exclusive video HERE
