The idea of turning Africa into a strong digital economy seems to be a pipedream with the New-York based tech firm Andela, which set its goal to train thousands of African software developers has now announced its intention to retrench developers on its rolls. The company was more driven on the lines of philanthropy by training young talents in software development before hiring them out to big companies. The company was flush with funds having raised US$100m in a Series D funding round. Its investors are high and mighty and include Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management. High-profile Silicon Valley backers are the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, GV (Google Ventures), Spark Capital, and Africa’s CRE Venture Capital.
On September 17, the New York-headquartered firm announced that it would lay off hundreds of junior engineers in Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, where it will be closing down its training facilities. About 250 junior developers will be affected in Nigeria and Uganda. Close to 170 developers will be losing their jobs in Kenya. However, the company maintains that it would continue to run its junior-developer training in partnership with the Rwandan government at its recently launched pan-African hub in Kigali. The reason for the lay down, company officials say, is due to shift in demand.
The company says that majority of the demand is now for more experienced talent. Sourcing experienced professionals is the new strategy being developed by the company. Of late, the company has been facing difficulties to suitably place young talents recruited to train through an elaborate process, which also involved scanning at multiple stages. Founded in 2014 Andela has recruited and trained a number of young talents and had outsourced them to international companies, mostly to those in North America and Europe. The recruitment procedure was terse and difficult. From thousands of students who apply, it recruits hardly one percent and attractive fellowships were given to the recruited candidates.
After a four-year rigorous training, engineers are absorbed into the team and go on to offer their skills to more than 200 international clients. Its international clients included Viacom, Cloudflare, GitHub and Invision. Yet the unexpected news of the layoffs so soon after the funding round raises questions over the firm’s ambitious bet on African youth. The decision to terminate the services of hundreds of computer professionals had come from blue and no one was expecting the company to take such drastic steps. There are reports that the client companies, which hired the young African professionals found their skills wanting. The company is readying itself to hire another 700 senior engineers by 2020 to keep up with the demand for experienced talent from its clients.
Analysts say, even with the winding up of the program to train young developers, Andela deserves kudos for pushing young African professionals into the center-stage. Another set of people feel that even if Andela switches to recruitment of more experienced people, there may be companies who would be recruiting fresh professionals through campus recruitment.
