Windows 7 now ‘speaks’ Swahili.

Those who complained that they couldn’t get an operating system that seemed customized for their needs now have something to smile about.

Windows 7 now comes with a Kiswahili option. Speaking at the official launch of the new development, Microsoft’s General Manager for the East and Southern Africa (or ESA region as it is commonly referred to) Louis Otieno says it has been a long time coming.

Boasting that this mean fete was accomplished in no more than 50 days, Mpasua Msonobari who is a Microsoft partner says “Absolutely no Tanzanians were involved in the translation of this new interface. This was done by Kenyans and goes on to show that there is a big community of Swahili speakers living in Kenya. ” Speaking as the direct beneficiary of this translation, John Kimotho, the Senior Deputy Director of the K.I.E. (Kenya Institute of Education) says that this is a revolutionary achievement. It will be key in helping even those who understand and are comfortable with only Swahili that they too can learn how to operate a computer and even get the certification offered by Microsoft on the Windows 7 platform.

The entire arrangement was made possible by innovative technology that allowed Mpasua and South-African linguistic experts to collaborate on the project over the period all without seeing each other. Amazing how technology helps achieve great things, isn’t it?

In addition to this, Louis from Microsoft outlined that they expect about 2 billion USD in ICT spend in the year 2011. Aside from that, he expects that servers will grow an approximated 7-10% on both the physical and the virtual front.

“This past year, Kenyan companies concentrated on laying down the infrastructure needed to move the ICT sector to greater heights. This year should be the one that these same companies concentrate on using the infrastructure they laid down last year to improve themselves in terms of accelerated consumption of services and driven growth.”

“With the arrival of the new constitution and impending devolution of resources, we are going to see a lot of changes in terms of use of cloud computing. We believe that it is a much needed gear-change from the conventional use of tools and architectures that tie us down to one location. We are moving towards an era where users will want to move with their data and the faster we can enable this the faster we shall grow in the ICT world. This is certain to bring about a boost in GDP and a stronger backbone to the economy.” He added.

This new feature of Microsoft is attainable as an upgrade plug-in. To get it navigate to the Microsoft website and search for it under downloads.

To get it users have to be running a genuine (non-pirated version) of the Windows 7 Operating System.

The Microsoft team added that they would produce the Kiswahili version of Microsoft Office 2010 in the 2^nd quarter of 2011.

Written by: juuchini on February 18, 2011.

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