CEO Weekends: Nigeria’s Kunle Awosika Takes Over Microsoft Kenya as New Country Manager

Joining Kenya from Microsoft Nigeria where he worked as the Director for the Enterprise and Public Sector Business in Anglophone Westafrica since 2009, Kunle Awosika has been appointed as Microsoft Kenya’s new Country Manager, in a bid to steer the next phase of expansion as Microsoft’s global focus shifts to devices and services.

Awosika would run the Kenyan office focusing on the growing a high performing team and building organizational capability and capacity, together with Microsoft partners, a his task lies in line with the recent restructuring of the Microsoft East and Southern Africa (ESA) region.

Microsoft was split into three sales regions – Microsoft Kenya, Microsoft Angola (covering Angola and Mozambique) and the new Microsoft East and Southern Africa territory which covers Botswana, Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The move will further enable the business to streamline its resources and strengthen its market share in Africa. Back then in 1996 Microsoft opened up its operations in Kenya, before expanding into the East and Southern African region. Louis Otieno, Awosika’s predecessor, is credited with the successful launch of

Microsoft in East Africa having started in the East African office 15 years ago. He grew the business with a dedicated team to cover 16 countries in East and Southern Africa. Otieno has since moved to manage Africa Initiatives as the Director Microsoft 4Afrika Initiatives.

As the newly selected candidate to boost growth and expansion backed with a well grasped knowledge and skills of contributing to business expansion in the west Africa region since 2009, Awosika has worked with several divisions, such as the GWMC (Government Wide Messaging and Collaboration platform), an major Nigerian initiative that focuses at unifying IT networks across the Nigeria; in addition to engaging in other business forums in his home country. Besides business forums and initiatives, he is not unfamiliar to the local Microsoft office in which he helped boost the sales function of Microsoft’s solutions to telecoms and other business verticals in the larger West, East and Central Africa region, reports say.

According to Hennie Loubser regional General Manager of Microsoft West, East, and Central Africa and Indian Ocean islands, Kunle has the credentials that would aid in the growth of Africa’s most dynamic and promising technology hubs in which Microsoft remains committed to the long term growth opportunity in Kenya.