Microsoft appoints Yacine Barro new Country Manager for West, Central Africa
Microsoft has appointed Yacine Barro as Country Manager for West and Central Africa (WCA). Barro, who returns to Microsoft after serving as Business Development Manager for Microsoft WCA between 2004 and 2006, will be based in Dakar, Senegal.
“We have the utmost confidence in Yacine and we are certain that under her leadership, the team will continue to accelerate the organisation’s cloud drive on the continent, increase digital transformation and maintain our customer focused culture across countries in the region,” says Amr Kamel, General Manager for Microsoft West, East, Central Africa and Indian Ocean Islands.
After graduating from the Institut Supérieur de Commerce et de Gestion (INSEEC) in Paris in 1997, Barro worked as a sales manager at CISCO Systems in France, before returning to her native Senegal in 2004 to work at Microsoft for 3 years.
In 2006, Yacine joined the headquarters of the Celtel Group (now Bharti) in Amsterdam to launch the corporate segment of the mobile phone operator in 21 African countries.
In 2008, Yacine co-founded and served as Executive Director for Africa24, which at the time, was the only pan-African information channel to be available 24/7.
The experience she gained from these previous positions helped her accrue versatility in strategy, business development and project management.
“It’s a great honour for me to join Microsoft and particularly to lead the WCA Team. I strongly believe that Microsoft is one of best companies in the world, in the way it empowers people and enables us to make a difference.
West and Central Africa has enormous potential and we have the exciting challenge to help grow the region through technology, increasing what it can offer the rest of the world. I feel truly thrilled to be part of it,” Barro added.
