Yacine Barro Bourgault

Yacine Barro Bourgault has led the Skilling and Infrastructure strategy at the Microsoft Africa Transformation Office since January 2022.

Yacine graduated from INSEEC Paris, a French Business school, and began her career as Sales Manager at CISCO SYSTEMS in Paris.

She then returned to Senegal in 2004 to open Microsoft’s first representation as Business Development Manager for West and Central Africa. In 2008, 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.

Building on this experience, Yacine embarked on the Africa 24 adventure and launched the first international news channel in Africa.  She served as CEO and led the deployment of Africa24 in the global media landscape.

In July 2017, Yacine returned to Microsoft as General Manager of the West and Central Africa Region, based in Dakar. A year later, she was promoted to Director of the Small and Medium Business Segment for Emerging Markets in the Africa and Middle East region.