African developers in high demand globally; Google looks to train more

Following a series of initiatives, including developer advocacy, startup acceleration, training programmes, and global technical mentorship that Google, a global tech company, has implemented over the last 10 years in Africa, the company says it aims to train 100,000 developers across the continent by 2022 as it launched the “Africa Developer Ecosystem Report 2021” demonstrating that, despite the challenges associated with the pandemic, the continent’s developer ecosystem is on the rise.

The African continent is home to more than 150 active Google Developer Groups and 100 Developer Student Clubs in Africa; and together, these groups reach over 200,000 community members in 40 of the 48 countries in the sub-Saharan African region. The report by Google showed that the demand for African developers reached a record high in 2021 against the backdrop of a global economic crisis and the impact of the pandemic.

With a 22 percent rise in the use of the internet among small and medium business owners on the continent, the need for web development services also increased alongside higher demand for remote development work with the reports stating that 38 percent of African developers work for at least one company based outside of the continent. This is evidenced by the magnitude of growth in Nigeria’s professional developer population which added an estimated 5,000 new professional developers to its pool in 2021.

At the launch of the report in Lagos, Nitin Gajria, managing director, Google in Africa, said, “While Africa’s tech innovation sector is making great strides; global tech companies, educators and governments can do more to ensure that the industry becomes a strategic economic pillar. At Google, we are intent on further igniting training and support for this community by bridging the existing developer skills gap and concentrating our efforts in upskilling female developers who face pointed challenges.”

The previous edition of the “Africa Developer Ecosystem Report 2021”, published in conjunction with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), had projected the internet economy in Africa to reach a 5.2 percent annual growth in GDP, contributing nearly $180 billion to Africa’s economy, and it also projected that the potential contribution could reach $712 billion by 2050.

As noted by Gajria, “In order to reach this potential, we have to provide better access to high-quality, world-class skilling on mobile technologies platforms coupled with increasing connectivity in Africa. Our effort to increase connectivity is focused on infrastructure, devices, tools and product localization.”

Key observations from the launched Google report on African developers in 2021 include that;