The world’s largest open source developer community GitHub has announced that it is increasing the scope of its GitHub Sponsors programme to 30 more countries, including African nations Egypt, Gambia, Kenya, and South Africa. Launched three years ago, the programme allows open-source devs to receive financial support from sponsors that GitHub connects them to. With these added countries, GitHub Sponsors is now available in 68 countries worldwide.

 “These 30 new regions are filled with thriving communities of open source creators and we are excited to further support the incredible developer growth that we see,” writes Jessica Lord, GitHub Sponsors Product Lead in an official blog post announcing the news.

Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and, interestingly enough Gambia have been selected by GitHub as online communities with large bases of open-source developers. Notably, Nigeria, often cited as one of Africa’s technology hubs is missing from the list as of now.

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Lord also writes that GitHub has improved the ways in which sponsors can find developers and maintainers through the GitHub Sponsors Explore tool, which shows the projects and devs available to be sponsored. Through the tool, devs can list their profiles and prospective sponsors can brown for which dev to support.

How Developers Can Join GitHub Sponsors:

To sign up for the GitHub Sponsors programme, developers need to begin by creating a profile which will market them and their currently ongoing projects.

After this, devs that want to sign up would usually have to join a waitlist, through this link, however, according to Lord the waitlist has currently been cleared so devs should hurry if they want to become part of the programme. This blog post has some great advice for devs to make their profiles stand out and also key information, like how to set sponsor tiers. Check it out if you’re interested.

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“Enabling as many developers as we can to have fulfilling careers in open source is core to our mission and this is an exciting milestone for us with 68 regions now supported,” writes Lord.

“Of course, there is still a lot to come and more developers to reach, so stay tuned as we continue to grow and help transform the developer experience!” they conclude.

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