The 9 Kenyan Andela fellowswill join Andela for a period of 4 years, their initial training before beginning client work which takes 4 – 6 months. Andela which is targeting to empower over 100,000 developers on the continent first launched in Nigeria where it already has begun its 10th cohort.
Founded by Jeremy Johnson, Christina Sass, and Iyinoluwa “E” Aboyeji and Ian Carnevale, Andela aims to give brilliant young people in Africa an on-ramp to the digital economy and give companies access to untapped, world-class talent.
Andela opened applications in Kenya April 16 and had over 1000 applicants in just a few days after the announcement. Andela’s mission critical is to train 100,000 young people across Africa and is working with the likes of Off grid Electric out of Tanzania, Microsoft, Udacity and Exec Online to help place its students into jobs and internships.
“It’s no secret that unemployment is a huge problem. We’ll be doing bootcamps in Kenya and other countries this summer,” said Jeremy Johnson told TechMoran. “My co-founder E is Nigerian, so that obviously had a huge impact but we’re mostly looking at demographics as we expand. TBD – we’re still just exploring all of them. We haven’t officially announced where we’ll be going next. but we obviously feel good about Kenya, Ghana, and SA, hence the early applicants and bootcamps.”
Andela is backed by investors including Steve Case, Omidyar Network, Founder Collective, Rothenberg Ventures, Learn Capital, Melo7 Tech Partners, and Chris Hughes and recently raised funding from Spark Capital to achieve this dream.
