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Africa is on track to add $ 180 billion or 5.2% to aggregate GDP by 2025 thanks to the rapid growth of its internet economy, says a report by the IFC of the World Bank and Google. In 2012, the continent’s Internet economy (iPIB) was estimated at just $ 30 billion, or 1.1% of its GDP.
This year, iGDP will contribute $ 115 billion, or 4.5% of a GDP of $ 2.554 trillion, says Accenture. In the US, the internet economy contributed about 9% of GDP in 2018.
The key to growing an internet economy, which includes everything from banks and fintechs to agrotechnics, e-health and venture capital, will be to develop the talent of the developers who build the products and engines that it runs on. Last year, the French-born CEO of Jumia, the pan-African e-commerce company, sparked outrage in African tech circles when he suggested there weren’t enough African-based developers to serve his company’s needs.
Currently, women account for 21% of developers in African countries, compared to just 15% of junior developers in the US.
The IFC / Google report says there are almost 700,000 professional developers in Africa with more than half in five African markets: Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa. That number is still relatively small compared to 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 that of more advanced economies, and overall numbers on the continent are growing faster. Only a third of them receive their training through universities, instead more than half are self-taught or pay for online school programs, expressing the desire and broad ambition to acquire skills for future jobs and ventures in countries with few existing formal jobs. but also a shortage of digital skills.
It’s easy to see why young African college graduates or recent graduates may choose to be self-taught or pay out of pocket for additional skills. The report notes, for example, that computer science courses at Kenyan universities still predominantly teach C ++, “even though Java and Scala are the most in-demand programming languages on the market.”
To date, much of developer talent falls into the “junior developer” category, presenting its own challenges, as found by Lagos-based Andela when it had to recruit more experienced talent to supply clients. in the US In African countries with smaller and more nascent developer populations, 43% of developers have only one to three years of experience, compared to 22% in the US. “
The report says that coding classes are driving the growth of software development training. Young companies such as Decagon (Nigeria), Gebeya (Ethiopia), and Moringa School (Kenya) have picked up where Andela left off by focusing on training young developers with flexible learning and boot camp-like experiences.
Google itself launched a program in 2017 to train up to 100,000 developers over five years to help fill the developer skills gap. Last year, Microsoft said it would spend more than $ 100 million on a software development center initiative in Africa with its first development centers in Africa opening in Lagos and Nairobi.
In addition to the rapidly growing talent pool, another notable positive is that there has been what the report describes as “real traction” with the increase in the number of female developers in African markets, led by Egypt, Morocco and South Africa. Currently, women represent 21% of developers in African countries, compared to just 15% of young developers in the US.
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