Coders4Africa – An African Startup Gearing Up to Be a World Leader in Software Outsourcing
Coders4Africa started out as a not for profit organization back in 2009, with the sole mandate of giving back to the community: through building up a rich network of African developers and giving them training as well as collaborating with other organizations in USA and Africa. There major source of funding for their activities came from grants they received from various stakeholders. They operated pro bono through their website Coders4Africa.org for a period of 4 years.
Over the time, it dawned on them that a nonprofit model of operation will not sustain their initiative, amidst growing demand for their services as software developers and giving support to the developers’ community. Coders4Africa (C4A) became a, for profit organization and launched a new website Coders4Africa.com with a new mission of controlling their own destiny and being able to meet the growing demand for their services. Both as software developers and giving support to the developers’ community.
C4A runs both website www.coders4africa.org and www.coders4africa.com concurrently, with one focusing on growing and nurturing the community and providing outsourcing jobs to African developers, while the other creating world competitive apps and contents meant for consumption in both the African and global market. C4A has set itself out on a course that would lead to it being the biggest, African software outsourcing company in the world: while not forgetting to build, nurture and support an equally as large network of highly skilled African developers. They strongly believe that both of these goals are complementary to each other and can be achieved by the year 2016.
Problems C4A intends to solve:
- Despite the fact that Africa has over 170 million internet users and cellphone users exceeding the USA, Africa still accounts for just 1% of world’s computer, software spending and ICT distributions.
- Digital jobs have just recently begun making impacts on the African economies, but still the pool of Africa software engineers is very low in the midst of the huge global and local demand.
- Africans have joined the ICT adaption bandwagon, and with it thousands of newly opened businesses, organizations and governments require the software developers’ services, thus increasing the demand for African developers.
- Like North America, Africa is also face with the problems of not having enough software developers and those already available are not at par as by the skills competency demanded by the job market.
C4A presents the best remedy for all the software and content related problems facing Africa and the world in general. They do this by producing the next generation of application engineers and software services to support a workforce pipeline competent enough to serve the 21st century African digital economy and the world in general. They intend to add value to the following stakeholders:
The African Economy:
- Creates applications and contents that are relevant to the African market and its 1 billion plus consumer population.
- Create top quality local quality content ready for hire by the local businesses.
- Create a pool of next generations of highly trained youths who can capitalize on the immense international ICT outsourcing jobs hence boost local economies.
- Have a workforce of dynamic, innovative and qualified staff who can come up with ICT tools and solutions that bootstraps, develops and sustains African country economies.
The North America Economy:
- Currently North America outsource jobs to Asia, but C4A intends to present a new, affordable and nearer destination for outsourcing. That will present greatly appreciated and serious competition to the conventional outsourcing destination.
- C4A will present a more linguistically and culturally diverse outsourcing destination that has the same outsourcing capacity if not more that Asia.
- Africa has 54 countries with about 1 billion population which can be target market to sell IT products and software to.
Value Addition To Software Developers:
- C4A intends to acquire the best and most marketable software engineers in the industry.
- Equip them with the necessary skills for innovation and entrepreneurship.
- Qualified engineers to works within the C4A international outsourcing hub, or placed at C4A partners and external clients.
- Provide training to the highest global standards in the software and application development industry.
- Create a networking and connectivity platform for coders in Africa which embrace knowledge sharing, connection, working on a project on a robust platform to engage with.
- Earn rewards and discounts on software licenses, cloud infrastructures and hardware.
- Celebrate their achievements with other members.
- Discover new friends, projects, products and ideas.
To reach out to the Coders4Africa team, simply send an email to Kwame Andah kwame.andah@coders4africa.com
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