Towards the end of May, aspiring software developers met in over 70 locations across Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda for the first meetup of the third phase of the Andela Learning Community. In Kenya alone, participants met in Eldoret, Kakamega, Kisii, Kisumu, Machakos, Meru, Mombasa, Nakuru, Nyeri, and Nairobi.
The Andela Learning Community (ALC) is Andela’s program to tackle the technical skills gap in Africa. First launched in 2017 in Nigeria and Kenya, it combines Andela’s learning science and community-building with Udacity and Google’s online curriculum.
The program engages those looking to improve or gain skills in software development who are connected with beginner or intermediate courses in Web development, Product design, and Android development.
Chimdi Aneke, Andela’s Talent Partnerships Manager, said: “Google announced a partnership with Andela and Udacity to provide 15,000 ‘single-course’ scholarships and 500 nano degree scholarships in this latest phase. The investment affirms Google’s commitment to developing communities of talent across Africa. We couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with them on our mission to unlock human potential at scale.”
Two months after this announcement, this latest phase of the ALC has seen over 16,000 applicants from 17 countries awarded the Google Africa Scholarship and a pilot program extended to Uganda for the first time.
The program is organized around learning communities that bring together participants in various locations to learn and share challenges encountered as they go through the courses. Andela attributes this model to the high completion rates of the program compared to MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) industry standards of 5-10%.
Evan Green-Lowe, VP of Talent Development of Andela says: “The most valuable part of the Andela Learning Community is how inclusive it is. We’ve seen incredible success through the ALC programme; our course completion rate is 5 times higher than the industry standard and since inception, we’ve received testimonials from graduates who are now employed as full-time developers, own their own businesses or are working at Andela. We remain committed to supporting learners develop the skills they need to become leading technologists.”
An example of such a learner is Juma Allan, who after undergoing the program in ALC 2.0 got a job with Twiga Foods as an Android Engineer.
Andela scales high-performing engineering teams with Africa’s most talented software developers. Backed by CRE Venture Capital, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Spark Capital, the company is catalyzing the growth of tech ecosystems across the African continent while solving the global technical talent shortage.
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