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- Hello everyone and welcome to The Future is Africa.
We're excited to tell you about how African developers
are building for the world.
I’m John Kimani. I’m a Program Manager with Google’s Developer Ecosystem Team
in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- I'm Andy Volk, Head of Google's Developer Ecosystem team
for Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Developer Ecosystem Team at Google is focused on supporting developers globally
through our developer and startup community programs.
As part of that work, in 2020, we partnered with Accenture
to create a survey of Africa's developer landscape.
Now, this was the first time Accenture had created a map of Africa's developers.
So this was a unique opportunity, not just to inform our own strategy
but to share this data with the world.
We’re here today to share some top highlights
of that research with you, but before we start and dive into the report itself,
we wanted to share our personal journeys and background with you. John?
- Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to meet
and work with some of the most talented and passionate developers from across Africa.
I have experienced firsthand the open and welcoming nature
of developer communities in the region.
I have also seen the social and economic transformation
brought about by the innovative solutions that developers are building.
What about you, Andy?
- Thanks, John. I spent years working in Silicon Valley
as an entrepreneur and a product leader,
focused on enabling communities and developers.
For the last 10 years, it’s been my privilege to work with African developers
and startups across the continent and support their growth.
And so for both John and myself, our journeys have led us here
to Google's Developer Ecosystem Team.
In September 2020, Google and the International Finance Corporation, the IFC,
released our first ever Economy Africa report
to highlight the strengths, challenges, and future potential of Africa’s internet economy
and how it's fueled by talented African entrepreneurs
creating new opportunities across the continent.
The report forecast that the internet
would contribute $180 billion to Africa’s economy by 2025,
with that contribution expected to grow to over 700 billion by 2050.
While there are several key factors driving this growth,
including the resilience of the internet economy,
consumer consumption, investment, infrastructure growth
and government policies, strong developer talent
was specifically called out as a key focus area in the report,
fueled by a young, fast-growing population.
- Yes Andy, Africa's developer population is young
and fast growing and the growth of local developer talent
goes hand in hand with the rise of the youthful population.
Projections indicate that Africa's population
will grow by 87% in the next 30 years.
And the continent will be home to one in three people,
aged between 15 and 35 globally by 2050.
This rapid demographic growth is translating
to changes on the technology landscape as well.
The increasingly young and educated population
is driving higher consumption of online services
and developers are setting up for this opportunity.
This fast-changing developer landscape
forms the basis of what we would like to talk to you about today.
There are three key points we want you to walk away with.
First, the number of African developers
is at a historical high and continues to rise annually.
This growing pool of developers is playing an important role
in Africa's digital transformation through the solutions they are building.
These developers are solving challenges facing the world
by leveraging the deep local perspectives.
One example is the challenge of insurance uptake in developing markets.
Pineapple, an InsurTech startup from Johannesburg, South Africa,
is addressing this problem by reinventing the way insurance has been traditionally done.
They use a peer-to-peer model that makes insurance easy, fair, and accessible.
Pineapple's registered members can use a mobile application
to cover their valuables by simply taking photos
of items they want to insure.
Finally, Google is committed to invest
in Africa's tech ecosystem, through training programs
and partnerships with other organizations
with a common goal of enabling these developers
to build for Africa and the world.
Let's take a look at each of these points.
- Tech talent in Africa is at a historical peak and continues to rise.
In Accenture's 2020 Developer Research,
they found nearly 700,000 professional software developers
located across the continent.
The vast majority of these developers are between the ages of 18 to 34,
skewing significantly younger than the median age
of software developers globally and implying even more future momentum
and growth of African developers, in line with John’s points earlier
on how Africa’s youth population will continue
to grow in the coming years.
But of course, Africa is not a country.
So to understand what the 700,000 number really means,
we need to look at how it maps out across individual countries.
As in this map of countries with the largest developer populations,
developers in Africa are spread across a geographically diverse range of countries.
And looking at these numbers on a country by country basis,
over half of Africa's developers are located
in four countries: Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
There are also growing developer populations in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Morocco
alongside emerging developer ecosystems in Ivory Coast, Rwanda, and Uganda.
However, it's critical that we do more than just observe
this growth but also understand the key factors fueling it.
John, what is driving this growth?
- There are three primary contributing factors
to the growth of the developer ecosystem.
The increase in innovation hubs, venture funding,
and developer training opportunities have collectively accelerated the growth
of Africa's developer landscape.
Tech hubs and investors bring complimenting value
to tech entrepreneurship, providing founders
with the resources, training opportunities, and funding they need to get started.
Starting off with tech hubs, innovation spaces have been
at the center of the digital evolution in Africa for a long time.
They are important because they provide physical locations
where developers can meet
and access reliable infrastructure, mentorship, and training opportunities.
The number of tech hubs in Africa has continued
to grow consistently over the last 10 years.
The total number doubled in just three years
from 314 in 2016 to over 600 in 2019.
There is also an increased effort to coordinate programs amongst the hubs,
which has led to the growth of regional and pan-African hubs networks.
These tech hubs are not only growing in number,
but also in the diversity of programs that they are offering.
These hubs started out as community spaces
where developers with similar interests would meet
to share knowledge and experiences.
They have now expanded their offerings
to include targeted startup support programs
that help founders build and grow their tech businesses.
Google has been partnering with leading tech hubs
and accelerator programs in Africa
with a goal of making our collective resources
available to Africa startups.
The iHub in Nairobi, Kenya, is one good example.
Founded in 2010, iHub joined the global
Google for Startups Partner Network, two years later,
and has continued to provide a home for developers and founders,
looking to start the digital entrepreneurship journey. Andy?
- It’s fantastic to see iHub has remained committed
to supporting Kenya's entrepreneurs for over a decade now.
Startups are emerging out of these technology hubs at an ever-growing rate,
providing key opportunities for developers to take their ideas forward
and create economic growth as they build for Africa and the world.
Africa’s venture funding landscape has been growing at an unprecedented pace,
reaching new historical milestones year after year
and is poised for continued growth in the coming years.
On the data shown here on startup equity deals
from Partech Partners 2020,
Africa Tech Venture Capital Report, you can see this growth
both through the number of dollars invested per year
and the number of deals closed annually.
While in 2020, we do see a one-year drop
in total dollars invested, even during that year,
which was strongly affected by the COVID-19 global pandemic,
global interest in African tech startups remained stronger than ever.
In that year, 44% more startups closed deals than in the previous year.
While we’ve been observing that strong startup growth in Africa,
we’ve also been shaping our programs at Google to further support it.
In 2017, African startups joined a growing group
of international counterparts
at Google’s global Startup Accelerator program in San Francisco.
And in 2018, we launched our first ever Africa-based Accelerator Program,
Google for Startups Accelerator Africa.
Since then, over 60 startups from across the continent
have graduated from Accelerator Africa.
Anchored out of Lagos, Nigeria, Accelerator Africa
is a pan-African Accelerator Program which brings together cohorts of top,
early stage African startups,
together with the best of Google’s programs, people and technology
alongside a network of experienced mentors
and successful entrepreneurs from across Africa.
One of those participating in African startups was Flutterwave.
In 2017, they joined 30 startups from Africa, Brazil, India, and Indonesia
for Google's Global Launchpad Startup Accelerator.
Fast forward four years later, and Flutterwave
is one of Africa's leading payments technology companies,
supporting 300,000 businesses across Africa.
Flutterwave recently announced their latest funding round of $170 million,
which puts their company valuation
at over $1 billion within just five years of founding.
Of course, one key requirement
to building successful startups like Flutterwave
is to have access to a large pool of talented developers.
- Absolutely. There has been a significant increase
in the number of developer training program, resources,
and institutions in Africa, over the last couple of years.
Developers are using different training channels
to gain relevant skills and access well-paying opportunities.
Sixty-seven percent of developers in Africa are either self-taught
or using informal training methods, such as boot camps or online schools.
Universities, however, remain the single largest training opportunity
for software developers with 31% of all developers
going through this former training channel.
Google is also committed to helping bridge the developer's skills
and opportunities gaps in Africa.
In 2018, we kicked off a five-year engagement
to provide 100,000 African developers
with access to high quality world-class training
on mobile and cloud technologies.
We continue to see strong successes from this training initiative.
Take Allan from Kenya for example.
Allan had always been fascinated by mobile devices
and how applications work.
The training presented the perfect opportunity
for him to start his software development journey.
Through the program, he was certified
on Android development and has been fortunate
to work with some of the best technology startups in the region.
Upskilling opportunities for developers
are not limited to structured training program.
Google provides community programs that allow developers
to connect, learn, and grow together.
The community-led Google developer groups
and university-based developers student clubs
provide opportunities for developers
and students interested in Google’s developer technologies
to connect and learn together.
These developer communities have additional support
from a global network of Google developer experts.
These are highly experienced developers who volunteer time to share knowledge
and experience by speaking at conferences, hosting workshops,
mentoring teams, and creating technical content.
We're also committed to building an ecosystem
where all women in technology can thrive.
Our Women Techmakers program is dedicated to support women in technology,
through community initiatives for them to connect
and network, build visibility, and access exclusive training resources.
So to recap, this rapid transformation we're seeing
is largely due to the role that tech hubs, investors,
and training programs have played in supporting developers across Africa.
Back to you, Andy.
- Thanks, John.
We truly believe that the future is Africa. Today, we've shared with you some insights
into that growing force of developers across Africa,
looking at who and where they are, how they’re training,
and what they're building.
We’ve also seen how developers are organizing
to solve regional and global challenges
with the support of a rapidly growing tech hub and investor network.
Google’s been proud to support, alongside a range of other organizations,
the continued growth and development of Africa’s developers and startups
to help accelerate Africa's future.
Today, we've released a new post
on the Google Africa Blog at africa.googleblog.com,
sharing more information about the initiatives we’ve discussed today,
how you can get directly involved with them,
and links to our complete Africa Developer Research Findings.
Thanks for your time.
We listed our Twitter handles to follow along
on social media, and for those interested in diving deeper
in what we discussed today, we'll see you on the Google Africa Blog.
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