{"id":342263,"date":"2017-05-30T20:30:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T12:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1496923"},"modified":"2017-05-30T20:30:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T12:30:51","slug":"african-andela-marks-year-three-with-uganda-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/african-andela-marks-year-three-with-uganda-expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"African Andela marks year three with Uganda expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jake Bright<\/span> Contributor<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Jake Bright<\/a> is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More posts by this contributor:\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Andela<\/a> is expanding in Uganda. The\u00a0technology training and job placement company, which recruits African software developers and places them at global companies \u2015 completed its first recruitment cycle in Kampala.<\/p>\n

The Uganda opening will add to offices in Nairobi, Lagos, New York, and San Francisco. It also marks year three of Andela\u2019s rise as a VC backed, revenue focused firm that is often misread as a charity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a mission driven for-profit company,\u201d said CEO Jeremy Johnson. \u201cFrankly, I think we\u2019ve become a poster-child for that\u2015that you can actually build businesses that create real impact,\u201d he told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

For Andela, the opportunity to train and employ developers from frontier African markets is rooted in supply and demand. The company highlights U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics<\/a> projecting a gap between an estimated 1.4 million computer science jobs by 2020 versus only 400,000 qualified graduates to fill them.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe started off with the proposition that brilliance was evenly distributed. That the combination of selection and exposure could unlock that potential. And that technology was the way to do it,\u201d said Johnson.<\/p>\n

The company touts it selection process as \u201cextreme recruiting\u201d<\/a> and \u201ca scientific approach to building engineering teams\u201d that includes 6 months of training and 900 skills checkpoints.<\/p>\n

Andela says its selects \u201cOne percent of tech talent from the largest pool of untapped talent in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its first Uganda recruitment cycle the accelerator accepted 8 of 800 applicants.<\/p>\n

Of Andela\u2019s overall program, Johnson explained, \u201cit\u2019s very\u2026immersive\u2015designed to upscale aspiring developers with the ability to connect those developers to top engineering firms around the world.\u201d Recruits are trained in a number of technology stacks: Android, Java, Ruby, and iOS among them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are bringing in a class every single month, and a new cohort is\u2026rolling on to partner companies every month.\u201d Andela places programmers at over 80 companies in 25 cities around the world, according to Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe structure it in a way where they don\u2019t have to leave their homes,\u201d he said, which supports Andela\u2019s social mission by creating local capacity and employment in select African markets.<\/p>\n

Per a company release, Kampala was chosen \u201cafter two years of collecting and analyzing a variety of data points on technology ecosystems across Africa.\u201d Key decision factors included Uganda\u2019s young population, 12 IT hubs, and vibrant tech scene with \u201cmeetups and hackathons\u2026happening on a weekly basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Time will prove if Andela\u2019s mission driven for-profit model can deliver ROI for its backers. The company has received $39 million in venture funding from investors including the Zuckerberg-Chan Initiative, Spark Capital, and GV<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to be sustainable. We\u2019ve raised venture capital because we\u2019re not there yet, but we\u2019re moving in that direction,\u201d said Johnson. He noted Andela currently earns revenues from corporate partners who pay to utilize developers. \u201cThose companies think of it a bit like AWS for talent,\u201d he said, referring to Amazon Web Services<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to Johnson, Andela will add a fourth country in the near term and look to hit the sustainability\/profitability mark at some point through continued demand for its developers.<\/p>\n

After testing Andela\u2019s talent, one current client\u2015online car insurance comparison site The Zebra<\/a>\u2015has continued to hire. According to CTO Meetesh Karia, the firm started with two developers in June 2016, before adding six more by 2017. He referenced the company\u2019s need for \u201chigh-caliber engineers\u201d and the Andela team\u2019s work in improving The Zebra\u2019s mobile web platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Andela is expanding in Uganda. The\u00a0technology training and job placement company, which recruits African software developers and places them at global companies \u2015 completed its first recruitment cycle in Kampala. The Uganda opening will add to offices in Nairobi, Lagos, New York, and San Francisco. It also marks year three of Andela’s rise as a VC backed, revenue focused firm that… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

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