What is Martin All About ?
The Full Story
Where it all began
Martin was born in St. Petersburg Russia to a Russian mother and Zimbabwean Father in 1991. His family relocated to Zimbabwe in 1996 where he spent most of his upbringing. He schooled in Bulawayo the second largest city in Zimbabwe where he completed his primary, secondary and tertiary education. He completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science at the National University of Science and Technology. His passion for solving African challenges using technology started in his second year of study when he linked up with two student innovators at his school, Takunda Chingonzoh and Jabulani Mpofu (Founders of Saisai) . Together they worked on a variety of tech innovation solutions, most notably a tech startup named "SaiSai" working on liberating the internet for Africa. Saisai is an internet mesh network of wi-fi hotspots that allows people to connect to the internet for free after watching an advert. Saisai went on to win the SWELL innovation award at Demo Africa but shutdown a few months later due to internet pricing regulations in its country of origin, Zimbabwe.
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Martin Ndlovu & Jabulani Mpofu
Pitching Saisai at Demo Africa 2014
Creating a platform for other innovators
Around the same time, Martin sat in on a Web 2.0 training program for his University faculty where he was assisting with IT support as an intern. While listening in he heard the presenter (Simunza Muyangana, Co-Founder of BongoHive) speak about how he and his friends had started an innovation space for young innovators in Lusaka Zambia. This inspired him to start "Sky Hub", an innovation hub for the people of his hometown Bulawayo (Nicknamed Skyz). He started an innovation space in his mother's garage where he hosted a variety of digital skills trainings, hackathons and coworking sessions with young people from around the city. Sky Hub was later given a space in one of the university's buildings and went on to grow and serve a wider audience.
Becoming a leader in Africa
Martin has never been scared to step up to leadership roles, at a young age, Martin was named the Chief Sixer of his boy scout group and went on to become a prefect in his primary school. This happened again in high school when he was selected as the youngest prefect in his time and went on to become Head Boy of the school, Soccer Captain, Chess Captain just to name a few.
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After Martin started university he was voted as the youngest member of the student government and was re-elected for a second term. He was later recognised for his work in founding an innovation hub in his community when he was selected to represent Zimbabwe at the Mandela Washington Fellowship for young African leaders. It is here that he joined 25 fellow Africans for an 8 week entrepreneurship training track at the University of Nevada Reno before congregating with all other young African leaders at the Summit in Washington DC. This experienced helped Martin to build his networks across Africa and gain valuable experience in business and entrepreneurship.
His journey at Microsoft
After graduating in 2016, Martin applied to join Microsoft and was accepted in the Microsoft Academy for College Hires program (MACH). He has performed a variety of roles at the company including:
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Partner Channel Development Manager where he worked with Microsoft Reseller Partner companies to grow their businesses with a focus on cloud technology,
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Solution Specialist for Modern Workplace - a role in which he consulted large enterprises and governments on digital collaboration and cyber security solutions to help them achieve their goals.
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Account technology strategist - Martin played an advisory role for large Microsoft accounts in Southern Africa and helped them to implement their digital transformation strategies.
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Enterprise Skills Program Manager - He then moved his focus to creating skilling programs to reskill employees of large enterprises in Africa on digital solutions.
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Head of Skills Development - He later went on to lead the Microsoft 4Afrika skilling team all up, covering key skilling initiatives for customers, partners, students, governments and job seekers.
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In his current role, Martin is the Skills Program Manager in the Microsoft Africa Transformation Office with an ambitious goal to upskill 30 million Africans in 5 years. This work en-tales building the Africa wide skilling strategies, making the right strategic partnerships and working with our network of learning partners to achieve skilling at an unprecedented scale.
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Working for Africa
Martin is very passionate about playing a role in developing Africa. His favourite quote is "When I die, will it have mattered to Africa that I lived". He lives by this mantra and has identified his role on the continent as an enabler in the Technology space. His goal is to rally the people of Africa to create, acquire and use technology for the benefit of the continent.
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The work he does at Microsoft aligns with his ambitions and he seeks to spread his net far and wide to try and empower the people of Africa to improve their lives by leveraging the best of what technology has to offer. There is a lot of work yet to be done in inspiring the world's youngest continent to rise up in a digital first world. Martin welcomes any opportunities to collaborate with people, organisations and governments towards common goal. Please feel free to reach out in the contact form below.
Let’s Work Together
Get in touch so we can start working together.