Ndimurukundo: Digital Skills Will Enhance Global Development  

Managing Director of Andela in Rwanda, Mike Ndimurukundo, on the sideline of the Nigeria-EU Innovation Day conference speaks about its importance and the global opportunities that are open to digital skills development. Emma Okonji presents the excerpts:   

What is your general assessment about the Nigeria-EU Innovation Days conference, jointly organised for the first time by the European Union and the Federal Government of Nigeria?

Generally, the conference was well organised and it attracted government officials like ministers and director generals of different government parastatals in Nigeria. The truth is that each time I come to Nigeria, I will always feel the vibrancy of the people of Nigeria and the various activities going on in the tech space. The first day of the Nigeria-EU Innovation Days conference, attracted government officials, policy makers, researchers in different fields of technology, including up-coming startups and I am pleased to interact with most of them. It is encouraging to see entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers at the conference, who are resilient in developing new solutions and researching new areas of technology advancement.

There was so much emphasis on technology innovation in the areas of e-Heath, Agri-tech and Industry 4.0 during the two days conference. How do you see technology driving these various sectors?

Most times when people talk about technology, they focus more on the software and hardware development, but what really becomes innovative about technology is when it is integrated with other sectors to drive the much needed change in those sectors. Technology can add value to e-Health, Agriculture and Industries and it can also drive industrial revolution. When technology is integrated with Agriculture and Health sectors for instance, it could increase productivity in these sectors and researchers are doing more to see how additional value can be derived from technology application. So the opportunities with technology integration are great and the young startups are eager to take advantage of the technology to further drive development.

From the perspective of Andela as a technology innovation company, what are your views about technology development in Africa?

It’s amazing to see the level of technology growth in Africa, especially when we think of where Africa was 10 years ago, when Andela started in Nigeria as a technology company, beginning with training of people to acquire technology skills. Today, Andela has trained over 100,000 people over the last 10 years. Some of those that benefitted from Andela’s training, who we call the ‘Andela Mafia’ have started their own tech companies and they are doing well. So the future is bright for technology development in Africa and more people are taking advantage of technology innovation to thrive in their businesses. One of the things that hinder innovation is the lack of capability to do new things. It does not really matter if someone has a great idea. The capability to translate that idea into bigger application is what matters. Africa is doing great in terms of technology growth and today the world is in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) where there are so many things happening in the AI space that are adding value to the things we do as Africans. For example, the Nigeria tech ecosystem is thriving and it will keep growing and that transcends into the rest of Africa.

What has been the expansion plan of Andela in the last ten years and what are the benefits of the expansion plan on Andela’s business and the people?

There has been evolution going on in the last 10 years. When Andela started 10 years ago from Nigeria, our model was to train the people in our physical locations through our Accelerator Programme, but as time went by, we realised that there were more talents out there that were ready to get into the market place without getting trained. As we expanded from Nigeria to Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Egypt and Ghana, we also realised that many talents needed training to upscale. Since then, Andela became fully a remote company, operating across Africa, South America and Asia, and today, Andela has a network of about 150,000 people who are vetted in addition to a community of over five million. So we have expanded and we have seen a lot of growth over the last 10 years, and our growth expansion has impacted several lives. Having expanded that much to become a big talent market place, our focus now is to ensure a seamless process for the talents that work with us and for our clients.

We have developed what we called the Andela Talent Cloud, which provides a level of transparency for the talents and for the company.

Andela started as a small tech business in Nigeria, but has grown and expanded into the global tech market in the last10 years. What necessitated the global expansion and the change in business plan?

The biggest change for Andela is moving from a physical operation perspective to a digital operation perspective in order to seamlessly connect to all our businesses in different part of the world as we expand our frontiers. The basis for this is to ensure that we are not limited by physical space and borders. Our growth actually necessitated our expansion plan, and as soon as we realised it, we became fully remote and we started removing the borders that could limit us. At that point, we were able to provide organisations with talented skills within 48 hours. So removing the friction that usually exists in recruitment and replacement, is what really added value to our expansion plan.

Andela had an initial target to train 100,000 talents in digital skills and make them ready for the job market. Has that target been met, and what has been the impact of the training?

Yes, we have met and superseded that target. We had a survey in May this year, when we turned 10 years in operation and saw that we have trained 110,000 talents in the last 10 years. From Google’s survey in 2021, the total number of software developers in Africa was about 16,000, and from that figure, Andela trained 15 per cent and the impact has been huge and this is something we achieved through partnerships with other organisations. So we train talents and connect them to the right jobs.

What has been the feedback from the training and what is the performance level of those trained and their resilience to overcome job challenges?

The feedback we got from those trained is encouraging us to train more talents. Most of them have established their own business and some are CTOs, CEOs and MDs of renown organisations. Some are working for global companies and they are thriving. We also have some of them who are working for Andela, and developing software and solutions that address specific challenges.

How is Andela leveraging evolving technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) to drive development in talent training?

Technology is evolving and AI and ML are driving digital skills acquisition. Few years ago, not much was said about AI and ML, but as of today, they have become the driving force for technology advancement globally. Andela has been deploying Machine Learning through its networks and what we started doing of recent is to ensure that people who have been trained, scale up their talents in new technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. So we are leveraging emerging technologies to give talents the opportunity to scale up. We had long embraced emerging technologies in our talent development and we present the opportunities that come with emerging technologies to our talents that have been trained by Andela.

We receive feedback from clients and we direct our training to areas with high level of opportunities.

Emerging technologies come with lots of market disruptions. What do you make of the disruptions and how does Andela view such disruptions?

No doubt, emerging technologies come with a lot of market disruptions, which I think are positive disruptions that will offer lots of digital opportunities. Although some people see it as negative disruption because it is phasing out the analogue type of jobs, but it is also introducing new digital jobs that people can manage even remotely. Andela had long embraced emerging technologies, which are going to be the super power of the future. Emerging technologies give room for increased productivity and efficiency. We encourage our trained talents to make use of AI in a positive way and we have guidelines for the positive use of AI. No doubt AI will displace some jobs that are analogue, but it will also create new jobs that are digital and AI is the next super power.

Despite the huge talents that Andela have trained over the past 10 years, there is still shortage of digital skills from Africa in some specialised areas. What is Andela doing to bridge the specialised skills gap in Africa?             

Andela will continue to train people in digital skills to bridge the specialised skills gap, through our Accelerator Programme, Learning Community Programme among others. However, the landscape has changed in Africa, where Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) studies are prioritised in order to bridge digital skills gap in Africa, which was not the case in the recent past.