There has been an ongoing explosion in the number of Nigerians employed by tech companies as seen in GitHub. A total of 872,162 software developers were employed in the nation in 2023, an increase of 45.62% from the previous year.
In its developer account count, the platform made it clear that it does not include users who are bots or otherwise marked as “spammy” by internal systems. Even though more than 100 million developers are on the platform, software developers reported that roughly 90% of developers use the platform. This tells us something, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
This report covers developer growth in Nigeria, beginning in Q3 of 2022 and ending in Q3 of 2023. From 598,921 in Q3 2022 to 872,162 in Q3 2023, the number of developers increased. The number of developers on the continent is highest in Africa’s biggest economy, followed by South Africa and Egypt.
As of the end of Q3, 2023, GitHub had 792,790 Egyptian developers and 540,586 South African developers. Many developers do not necessarily have jobs just because there are a lot of them on GitHub, as some developers pointed out.
According to Chime Somtochukwu, a front-end software engineer at FlexFinance, not everyone on GitHub is looking for work.
Read also: How technology helps in reducing world hunger
Details on this rise
According to Google, Nigeria had 84,000 professional developers in 2021, which is significantly lower than the data from GitHub. In 2021, the tech giant observed that there was a 3.8% increase, reaching 716,000, in the total number of African professional developers. Among GitHub’s user base, 395,367 were Nigerian developers.
Google emphasised that the rising demand for remote tech talent and the increased hiring of local startups were key factors in this.
According to the report, this encouraging trend was attributed to three primary elements in the tech ecosystem: Over half of Africa’s software engineers work for local startups, and in 2021, those startups raised over $4 billion—2.5 times as much as in 2020.
The pandemic accelerated the worldwide demand for remote tech talent, creating more remote employment opportunities for African developers. In the end, local companies boosted their internet usage and brought in developers to assist with their online expansion.
Developers in Africa tend to be younger than their counterparts in more developed markets, Google noted at the time. Additionally, developer employment numbers may have been impacted as startups have been laying off employees due to a decrease in available funding on the continent. 2,500 employees from African startups were let go in 2023, according to Briter Bridges.
The testimonies
Mobile app developer Olajumoke Oluwadamilola highlighted the importance of GitHub, stating that potential employers evaluate candidates based on their GitHub profiles.
According to her, they anticipate being able to see your code structure and get a sense of the projects you have worked on.
She is able to delegate specific tasks to other developers without having to send them the code physically. According to her, it facilitates collaboration and code merging. It makes her happy that she can keep track of everything she has ever worked on in one place and easily share it with others.
A frontend software engineer at FlexFinance, Somtochukwu said that GitHub was great for developers because it lets them work together and show off their skills.