Microsoft Shuts Down its Africa Development Centre in Nigeria

Renowned tech giant Microsoft has just shut down its Africa Development Centre (ADC) in Nigeria after five years of operation.

Microsoft established its Africa Development Centre in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, in May 2019 to serve as a premier center where world-class African talent can create solutions for local and global impact.

Now, Microsoft has informed its Nigerian staff, with over 200 members at the Lagos Centre of its plans to restructure, which will see them get laid off by the end of June after salaries and other remunerations must have been paid.

Surprisingly, this same fate has not been meted out to the staff at the Kenyan Development Centre, leading many to conclude that the reason behind Microsoft's motive was as a result of the unfavourable policies put in place by the Nigerian government.

Microsoft still claims that the Centre will be operational and that it will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for the Nigerian future and in support of its customers and partners.

However, an insider source confirmed that the Lagos Centre, for now, is only in operation for minor activities such as customer care and support as regards Microsoft products, with a few support engineers who still have their jobs intact.

With this new development, Microsoft joins a growing list of multinational corporations that have either exited the Nigerian market or stopped operations, mainly due to bad policies and worsening economic conditions.

This would also take the unemployment rate in the country to unprecedented levels, which will most definitely surpass the current combined unemployment rate of 17.3% per data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for the third quarter of 2023.