Africa is currently the world’s fastest-growing continent for software developers with nearly over 700’000 professional software developers. This is according to the e-conomy Africa 2020 report released by Google and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
According to the new report, more than 50% of these developers are concentrated in five key markets: Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa.
The report also shows that while there is rising interest in developer careers, a growing number of developer communities, and an increasing number of programs springing up to address training, the developer ecosystem is still nascent.
This is based on the experience of the players driving the change and the model they have adopted with a large poll of African developers still young and mainly junior developers.
Although there is a change in the approach as the focus on tech talent development in Africa has shifted from training entry-level talent to training senior talent creating a gap in the market for entry-level talent which new players like AltSchool Africa are out to fill.
To achieve its mission of filling the gap in the Africa developers market AltSchool Africa has now raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to scale its operations.
What You Need To Know About AltSchool Africa
Founded by Adewale Yusuf, Akintunde Sultan, and Opeyemi Awoyemi, AltSchool Africa core focus is to solve Africa’s talent problem and become an entry point for young Nigerians and Africa’s into tech.
AltSchool is not the first Africa Startup to try this model, the frontrunner is another Nigerian startup Andela. Founded in 2014, Andela’s core mission was to train Nigeria cum Africa developers for entry-level software development roles and find global opportunities for them. This continued till 2019 when Andela started experiencing difficulty finding work for its poll of junior developers as demand around the world shifted from developers with little experience to more experienced developers—mid to senior level.
To survive and stay the course, Andela has no option but to switch models from training and placing junior developers into global roles to senior talents.
But AltSchool has done its homework and understands that Africa’s developer scene deficit cannot be filled without junior developers, so unlike Andela, it is focused on training junior to mid-level developers using a different model that will reduce that transition time to 1 year.
AltSchool Africa Model
According to Adewale Yusuf in his recent interview with TechCrunch, AltSchool which launched in October 2021, will adopt an income-sharing agreement (ISA) model, so when students complete the program and get hired, they’re expected to pay $500, which can be paid in full or installments — $50 over 10 months or $100 over five months.
AltSchool might do away with this model for its next batch. Instead, the company may use a subscription model, where students pay between $20-$50 monthly for the duration of their program.
To show its commitment to its vision, AltSchool will make provisions for those who didn’t get admitted into its program. They can access the platform’s first-semester content for free and practice. If they stick to the end of the three-month curriculum, AltSchool will provide avenues for them to complete the entire nine-month program.
More than 8,000 people have applied so far to participate in AltSchool’s first batch of software engineering program which has three tracks of Frontend Engineering, Backend, and Cloud engineering, the program which starts in April have applications from over 19 countries (including 14 African countries).
AltSchool Plan for the Future
AltSchool plans to roll out in the Q2 of 2022 courses in product (product design, product management UX writing Digital Marketing), blockchain, and data. Interested participants can join the waiting list for the product courses here.
AltSchool promises to use its new funding to build its content and curriculum, technology infrastructure, and expand its “Community Peering Learning (CPL)” initiative, which allows participants to meet physically on occasion to network, learn, and exchange ideas.
Individual investors in AltSchool’s funding include Flutterwave co-founder and CEO, Olugbenga Agboola; Paystack co-founder and CEO, Shola Akinlade; Nigerian musician Folarin Falana, popularly known as Flazthebahdguy; and Akitoye Balogun, another Nigerian musician known as Ajebutter22; while the VCs are Nestcoin, Pledges, Voltron Capital, and Odba VC.