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Africa Needs More Homegrown Software Developers to Correspond to its Growing Internet Economy

November 17, 2020

Africa is on course to add $180 billion or 5.2% of aggregate GDP by 2025 thanks to the rapid growth of its internet economy says a report from the World Bank’s IFC and Google. In 2012, the continent’s internet economy (iGDP) was estimated at just $30 billion, or 1.1% of its GDP. This year iGDP will contribute $115 billion, or 4.5% of a $2.554 trillion GDP, says Accenture. In the US the internet economy contributed around 9% of GDP in 2018.

Key to growing an internet economy—which includes everything from banks and fintechs to agritech, e-health, and venture capital—will be growing the developer talent that builds the products and engines on which it run. Last year, the French-born chief executive of Jumia, the pan-African e-commerce company, sparked outrage in African tech circles when he suggested there weren’t enough developers based in Africa to service his company’s needs.

Women currently make up 21% of developers in African countries, compared with just 15% of junior developers in the US. The IFC/Google report says there are nearly 700,000 professional developers across Africa with more than than half in five African markets: Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa. That number is still relatively small against Africa’s 1.3 billion people—California alone has 630,000 developers while Latin America has 2.2 million.

But Africa’s developer talent is younger than those in more advanced economies and the overall numbers on the continent are growing faster. Just a third of them receive their training through universities, instead more than half are either self-taught or pay for online school programs, speaking to the desire and broad ambition to acquire skills for future employment and entrepreneurship in countries with few existing formal jobs, but also a shortage of digital skills.

It’s easy to see why young African undergraduates or recent graduates might choose to be self-taught or pay out of pocket for additional skills. The report notes, for example, computer science courses in Kenyan universities still predominantly teach C++, “even though Java and Scala are the programming languages in the greatest demand in the marketplace.”

To date much of the developer talent falls into the “junior developer” category which presents its own challenges as Lagos-based Andela found when it had to recruit more experienced talent to supply clients in the US and other markets. In African countries with smaller and more nascent developer populations, 43% of developers have only one to three years of experience, compared with 22% in the US.”

The report says coding classes are driving the growth in software development training. Young companies including Decagon (Nigeria), Gebeya (Ethiopia) and Moringa School (Kenya) have picked up where Andela left off in focusing on training young developers with flexible learning and bootcamp-like experiences. Google itself rolled out a program in 2017 to train as many as 100,000 developers over five years to help plug the developer skills gap. Last year Microsoft said it would spend over $100 million on a software development center initiative in Africa with its first development centers in Africa will open in Lagos and Nairobi.

As well as the fast-growing talent pool one other notable positive is that there has been what the report describes as “real traction” with growing the numbers of female developers in African markets, led by Egypt, Morocco, and South Africa. Women currently make up 21% of developers in African countries, compared with just 15% of junior developers in the US.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

From 2020, South African Schools Will Get A New Curriculum Featuring Coding and Robotics

July 21, 2019

Give it to South Africa. Unlike Rwanda that recently introduced the first public coding academy which only a few students may ever get a chance to attend, South Africa is going the extra mile to making it compulsory for coding and robotics to be taught in all primary and high schools across the country. This will, of course, take off in 2020, when a new curriculum comes into effect. This appears to be a major first in Africa.

Here Are Things You Need To Know

South Africa’s Department of Basic Education is currently updating its curriculum to ensure that the children coming from the South African education systems are equipped with the skills that will ensure they are ready to either become tech entrepreneurs or enter the workforce from day 1 of graduating from high school. This is according to Tourism minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane who was presenting at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development at the United Nations recently.

“(The) South African government has developed Coding and Robotics curricula Grade R-3 and will complete Grade 4 to 9 before the end of 2019,” she said.

“This curricula will provide learners with understanding and will develop their skills and competencies to prepare them for the 4th Industrial Revolution. The curricula will ensure that our schooling system produces learners with the foundation for future work and equip them with skills for the changing world.”

Here Is The What Is Intended by The South African Government

The coding curriculum is aimed at developing learners’ ability to:

Solve problems, think critically and work collaboratively and creatively;
Function in a digital and information-driven world;
Apply digital and ICT skills;
Transfer these skills to solve everyday problems.

“Using University of South Africa’s (UNISA’s) 24 ICT Laboratories located throughout the country, 72,000 teachers will be trained to teach coding to primary school learners,” Kubayi-Ngubane said.

“We will do this in partnership with civil society, academic institutions and businesses such as Africa Teen Geeks and international players like MIT.”

To make this happen, South Africa’s Department of Education has already developed a framework for ‘teaching and learning of coding’.

“Coding requires a dedicated platform and the Department with the assistance of Google and other Big Businesses through Africa Teen Geeks are developing a coding platform that will utilise Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to customise learning and teaching.

“This Coding platform will be available in all 11 official languages ensuring that rural and township children will be introduced to coding in their own mother tongue in line with this government mission to provide an inclusive education accessible to all,” she said.

Kubayi-Ngubane said that the Department will pilot the coding curriculum in 2020.

“Throughout this year we are preparing the system to ensure that the schools are ready for full implementation post 2020. Each township and rural school in the country will be appropriately resourced to ensure creation of an enabling environment,” she said.

South Africa Is Setting A Big Example For Other African Countries

Take it or leave, the era of technological disruption has come to stay. Forward-thinking countries are shooting their shots early. For example, computer programming will become a mandatory subject in Japan’s elementary schools from April 2020, as the country seeks to train a new generation in highly sought information technology skills.

The basics of coding will be taught starting in the fifth grade. New textbooks approved by the education ministry on March 26 task students with digitally drawing polygons and making LED lights blink using simple commands, for example.

South Korea began working the subject more heavily into elementary and middle school curricula in a 2007 review of its educational system.

In 2014, the U.K. introduced programming into mandatory education for students aged 5 to 16

With the growing influence of technology, expect it to take priority over basic analytical subjects such as maths in no due time.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.

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