Microsoft is winding down its Africa Development Centre (ADC) in Nairobi, placing almost 400 jobs in danger and reversing a seven-year effort to make Kenya a hub for constructing know-how for international markets.
Two workers, who spoke on the situation of anonymity, advised TechCabal that employees on the centre, housed in Dunhill Towers in Nairobi’s Westlands district, have been referred to as to a gathering on Monday morning and requested to fulfill with their managers by Friday, October 16, to debate exit choices, together with severance phrases.
The closure comes seven years after the corporate pledged more than $100 million to develop African tech expertise, to make Nairobi certainly one of its engineering hubs outdoors the US. It would unwind a venture constructed on the promise that African engineers may construct merchandise for international markets with out leaving the continent, elevating questions on Microsoft’s long-term plans for engineering in Africa.
“We are communicating directly with employees in Kenya about proposed changes to our engineering operations,” a Microsoft spokesperson advised TechCabal on Monday. “We recognise the uncertainty this brings and are keeping those discussions private. Microsoft remains committed to Kenya and will continue to have employees in the country while supporting the country’s ongoing digital transformation and innovation ambitions.”
The assertion didn’t verify the centre’s closure or specify what number of workers would stay or when the modifications would take impact.
Two different workers, who requested to not be named as they aren’t authorised to debate the matter, advised TechCabal they anticipate their conferences with supervisors to concentrate on severance phrases slightly than on whether or not they are going to keep.
“Our case is sealed; we just didn’t know when,” one worker mentioned.
Another individual aware of the matter mentioned fewer than 10 workers are anticipated to stay, together with employees in gross sales and recruiting, two in Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS), which manages buyer and accomplice relationships, and workers engaged on AI for Good, Microsoft’s initiative to use AI to social and environmental challenges.
Microsoft’s seven-year guess on African engineering
When Microsoft launched the Africa Development Centre (ADC) in 2019, Michael Fortin, then a company vp, mentioned it will enable engineers to do “meaningful work from their home countries” whereas working inside a world engineering organisation. Microsoft planned to hire 100 engineers by the end of 2019 and develop the workforce throughout Nairobi and Lagos to 500 by 2023.
By December 2022, Microsoft President Brad Smith mentioned the Nairobi centre employed more than 450 engineers. The centre had met its unique hiring ambition, making it tougher to elucidate the closure as a failure to ship on its preliminary promise.
The Nairobi closure follows Microsoft’s May 2024 resolution to shut its sister centre in Lagos, a transfer the corporate mentioned on the time wouldn’t have an effect on its operations in Kenya. The Lagos closure caught employees unexpectedly, whereas Nairobi workers say that they had seen indicators of bother for a while.
On Monday, Kenya’s ICT Minister William Kabogo said he met a Microsoft delegation led by Jeff Bullwinkel, the corporate’s vp and deputy basic counsel for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with its East Africa staff headed by Angela Ng’ang’a.
Microsoft briefed him on “its evolving operations in Kenya in the context of its global restructuring,” Kabogo mentioned, whereas he pressed the corporate on “protecting jobs at Microsoft’s Nairobi engineering centre.”
The firm reaffirmed its long-term dedication to Kenya, he mentioned, and each side agreed to draft a joint motion plan. Neither has disclosed what the plan will include or whether or not it may change a choice workers describe as last.
Microsoft has but to reveal why it is closing the Nairobi centre, and other people aware of the matter level to a number of attainable components. The resolution comes amid a wider spherical of cuts on the firm, which announced about 4,800 job cuts in July 2026, or roughly 2.1% of its workforce, following about 15,000 cuts in 2025.
The reductions come as Microsoft pours file sums into AI infrastructure, elevating questions on which elements of its enterprise will proceed to obtain funding. A distant engineering centre may come underneath strain, although no public proof hyperlinks the Nairobi closure on to the worldwide cuts.
Kenya has additionally struggled to advance one other main Microsoft initiative. The $1 billion data centre that Microsoft deliberate with Abu Dhabi-based G42 in Olkaria has stalled amid issues about electrical energy capability and disagreements over the Kenyan authorities’s capability to ensure funds for the ability’s capability. President William Ruto has cited the nation’s restricted energy provide as an issue. However, authorities officers have mentioned the venture has not been deserted.
A 3rd attainable issue is the price of sustaining a big native workforce, significantly its tax invoice. One worker advised TechCabal that Microsoft’s Kenyan workers generate at the least KES 1.5 billion ($11.6 million) in annual Pay As You Earn (PAYE) taxes for the Kenya Revenue Authority. TechCabal couldn’t independently confirm the figures.
The closure would return tons of of engineers to a job market Microsoft helped reshape when it opened the centre in 2019. The firm recruited talent from Kenyan banks, telcos and know-how corporations to construct its native engineering staff.
Seven years later, these employers and different know-how firms shall be among the many locations its departing engineers might look to subsequent, elevating questions on the place the specialised expertise constructed on the centre will go and whether or not Kenya can retain the talents and expertise it took Microsoft years to assemble.
True scale calls for transferring past surface-level integrations to sturdy execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the convention strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, international monetary operators, enterprise leaders and people rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
