By Nqobile Dludla

JOHANNESBURG, March 6 (Reuters) - Microsoft ( MSFT )

will invest an additional 5.4 billion rand ($296.81 million) by

the end of 2027 to expand its cloud and artificial intelligence

infrastructure in South Africa to meet the growing demand for

the company's Azure services in the region.

Microsoft ( MSFT ) Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said at an

event in Johannesburg on Thursday that the world's biggest

software maker would pay for technical certification exams for

50,000 individuals in high-demand digital skills.

The certification will be for cloud architecture, AI and

cybersecurity, he added.

Microsoft ( MSFT ) has already spent 20.4 billion rand to set up

South Africa's first enterprise-grade data centres in

Johannesburg and Cape Town. The country has become a major hub

for data centres to handle the high computational demands of AI

as companies seek to integrate the technology into various

products and services.

Microsoft ( MSFT ) plans to invest about $80 billion globally in

fiscal 2025 on developing data centres to train AI models and

deploy AI and cloud-based applications.

($1 = 18.1936 rand)