[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOHN KIMANI: Hello.
And welcome to our session on developers in Africa.
Africa's startups are going through a period
of unprecedented growth, reaching new funding heights
each year.
But what does this mean for the developers behind the startups?
Today, we're going to share insights
from our research in Africa, the data and the people
behind Africa's startup ecosystem.
I'm John Kimani from Google's Developer Ecosystem team
in Sub-Saharan Africa.
My team works with developers who
are leveraging Google's technologies
to build innovative solutions for Africa and the world.
We support developers through a number
of community programs such as Google Developer groups
and student clubs, which enable them to connect, learn,
and grow together.
We encourage you to join these communities AT
developers.google.com/community.
These communities and programs exist in an ecosystem
that is young and growing fast.
To tell us more about this ecosystem,
here's my colleague Andy.
ANDY VOLK: Thank you, John.
I'm Andy Volk.
And I lead the Developer Ecosystem team
for Sub-Saharan Africa at Google.
I've spent the last decade focused
on enabling African developers and startups to succeed.
We're here today in partnership with Google's Next Billion
Users team, which focuses on making technology
helpful, relevant, and inclusive for people new to the internet.
For Google, it's critical to look at both the direct results
of our work with developers in the region
and how it impacts Africa's developer ecosystem as a whole.
As global policy expert Joni Seager said,
measurement counts.
What gets counted counts.
And when it's not counted, it's absent and invisible.
And so to understand our developer ecosystem impact,
we need hard data.
While there are multiple reports on pan-African startup funding,
in-depth research on Africa's developer talent landscape
has been almost non-existent.
So we partnered with Accenture and built
Africa's first Developer Ecosystem report,
which was published in 2020.
Today, we want to share with you our newest 2021 version
of the Africa Developer Ecosystem report.
This report is a result of a year
of research with Accenture.
We've measured the developer ecosystems
of 16 different African countries
across several different growth trajectories,
from the countries maintaining steady growth,
to the ones sprinting ahead with high growth rates,
to those building the foundation for future growth.
Francophone and lusophone country coverage
also increased significantly in this report
from the previous version, adding more linguistic
diversity to our coverage.
And here's our key message for you.
The demand for African developers
hit an all-time high last year.
Can you guess why?
To help answer that question, we're
going to share insights with you on what's
driving this rapidly increasing demand for African developers.
We will share the reasons why developer opportunities
across the continent are increasing.
We'll also detail the positive effects
of new demand on developer population and pay.
Finally, we'll touch on some challenges
and explain the role that education and access will
have in ensuring growth for current and future generations
of Africa's developer talent.
JOHN KIMANI: Thank you, Andy.
Let's dive into the insight, starting off
with the increasing opportunity for African developers driven
primarily by startups and small businesses.
Demand for African developers continue to grow and reach
new heights in 2021.
Employers both local and global are creating opportunities
for developers in Africa, allowing
them to use their skills in building
for Africa and the world.
As for what's driving this growth,
we believe that there are three main factors which
contribute to this positive trend in 2021--
local startups raising more funding,
increased global demand for remote tech talent,
and increased internet usage by local businesses.
Let's take a deeper look at each one of these factors.
Looking at developer growth, we found a direct correlation
between startup investment growth and developer growth
in Africa.
2021 was a year of significant growth for startups in Africa.
African startups raised over $4 billion
in 2021, growing by over 150% in 2021 from the previous year,
and reaching yet another all time annual funding peak.
Our research shows that startups hire over half
of Africa's developer population.
Startups are often the first businesses
willing to hire junior developers,
providing critical on-the-job training.
As you can see here, more than 80%
of venture capital funding in Africa
went to the top four countries with the highest population
of software developers.
That is Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, and Kenya.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage
of global engineering teams working remotely
increased over five times.
And the majority of these teams are expected to stay remote
after the pandemic.
This trend points to continued remote work demand
for developers in Africa.
Local businesses increased internet use and hire
developers to help them build their businesses online.
An example is Ahadi Movers, a moving and relocation company
based in Nairobi, Kenya, who grew their successful business
from scratch with Google Business profiles and Google
Ads.
They continue to expand, hiring more team members
and serving between 70 and 100 customers a month.
ANDY VOLK: The next batch of insights
that we want to share with you are around Africa's developer
ecosystem, its increased developer population,
compensation, and preferred platforms.
As we dive into the numbers showing
how the size of Africa's developer population and pay
grew in 2021, it's also important
that we consider them in context of the fast-growing opportunity
for African developers which John just reviewed.
According to our research in 2021,
there were a total of 716,000 software developers in Africa.
That represents nearly 4% growth compared to the previous year.
But at the same time, as John shared with us,
African startup funding increased 150%.
To put things in perspective, although the number
of developers continues to increase,
that percentage is still smaller than how fast African startup
funding and remote work opportunities
for African developers have increased over the past year.
Not surprisingly, in that same year,
developer compensation increased by 9%
for mid-level developers and 11% for senior level developers.
And if you want to see where these developers are investing
most of their time, web and mobile development
were the primary platform choices
for developers in Africa with nearly half
of all developers building apps for Android
alongside the same number of developers
building web-based solutions and applications.
A third key takeaway we want to share with you
is how education and access are driving developer growth.
With increasing demand for African developers outpacing
supply, it's critical that we look
at how to best support the growth of Africa's developer
ecosystem, both in terms of what's already working
and what developers are telling us they need.
When looking at the educational channels
that developers are using for training,
universities remain the number one single source
of education for African software developers.
However more than half of developers
learn through a variety of informal methods.
These include boot camps, online coding schools,
self-taught developers, and on the job training.
In addition to looking at how developers are already
learning and upskilling, we need to look
at what headwinds developers are encountering in Africa
and where we can improve their experience.
When we ask these developers how their experience could
be improved, the majority of responses fell into two groups.
The top group of challenges were around internet access,
specifically around speed, reliability, and cost.
The second area of challenges were
around developer education.
They want more training opportunities right now.
Specifically, they want more scholarships
for training classes, networking events
focused on upskilling and business connections,
and in-person local learning events.
Communities have also played a key role
in supporting the growth of developer ecosystems worldwide.
And that effect is just as strong in Africa
where Google reached nearly one out of every two developers
on the African continent through our developer community
and training programs, including Google Developer
Groups or GDGs.
JOHN KIMANI: A good example of developers coming together
to learn and share is Google Developer Group Conakry
in Guinea.
Founded in 2018, GDG Conakry has grown
to a community over 3,000 members who
focus on machine learning and Android apps development.
Two years ago, the community introduced Google Technologies
Week, a week-long series of tech talks focused on various Google
technologies as a way of keeping the community's members engaged
during the pandemic.
Following the success of the debut event,
they decided to make this event series
a core part of their regular community offerings.
The community's training and mentorship programs
continue to provide inspiration for young people
in Guinea looking to explore careers
in software development.
ANDY VOLK: To sum it up, in 2021,
we've seen local and remote opportunities
for African developers are growing rapidly.
Africa's pool of professional developers
continues to grow, but not as quickly as demand,
resulting in higher compensation.
An increased educational opportunities for developers,
both formal and informal, are enabling the growth
of developers in Africa.
But there's still more that can be done to address
developers' needs in Africa.
We encourage you to download the full report at Next Billion
Users under the Research tab.
As mentioned at the beginning, Google's Next Billion Users
initiative aims to create a more inclusive internet for everyone
everywhere.
And we invite you to watch the other MBU sessions
at Google IO, what we can learn from the internet's newest
users, and building for everyone,
the importance of representative data,
on demand at the IO website under the MBU tag.
Thank you for joining us today.
And we're looking forward to seeing
how you use the insights and the data from this report.
JOHN KIMANI: A special thank you to all the African startup
founders and developers who give their time for this session.
[MUSIC PLAYING]