It is no longer news that one of the biggest tech companies in Africa, Andela, made one of the biggest decisions in its 5-year history days ago to cut off over 400 staffs across Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. This has led to mixed receptions from the society as some find it to be a relatively shocking adventure by the big name and others justify the move seeing it as a highly expected one.
In case you have no idea what Andela is and what they do, the Company is one of the larger tech ones that is majorly focused in Africa. Their main job is to train and connect Software Developers that base in Africa and gives them exposure to the global hemisphere. Hence, they provide job for the African tech man and also reduce the shortage of skilled Software Developers in the Global tech sector.
Andela started their operation in May 2014 in Nigeria, but the company have gained a high level of success since it’s founding and now have offices in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and the United States.
Now back to the main story, On September 17, 2019, Andela decided to take one of its bravest decisions ever as the company made a public announcement that they would be letting go of over 250 Junior developers from Nigeria and Uganda and an extra 170 developers from Kenya will be departing the fast-growing company.
This decision came as a shock to the entire African tech scene and spurred a lot of good and bad reactions from the millions of tech followers out there. Now the main question is “what does this mean for the Nigerian tech scene?”.
Well, as clearly stated, Nigerian developers were not exempted from this massive Andela fumigation and it is no doubt that one way or the other, it will have a huge impact in the country’s Tech hemisphere as she is one of the fastest-growing in that aspect. The country is known for producing really skilled Software Developers and Computer Programmers and is the main site for Andela by the way.
Now, with a good number of this skilled personnel released, let’s check out some consequences it may have on the large Nigerian scenery of technology.
It is surely known that only the skilled get to work with Andela. In fact, only the highly-skilled get to work with Andela. So this means the high number of Software Developers laid off by Andela has released quite an amount of zealous, experienced and highly skilled Tech personnel to the open market. This has its advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage is that other smaller local tech companies now have the opportunity to employ Andela-worthy staffs to their firms and trust me, these jobless ex Andelians, or at least a good number of them will jump on the newest opportunity to get a job and continue doing what they love.
This means, Andela has given Nigerian Tech firms a shot at employing a higher percentage of skilful engineers now than before, this will enhance productivity and efficiency in the company’s tech field. Yeah, these companies are smiling now.
Now to the disadvantage. Well, it’s pretty simple, a company which wants to move quickly to the next level will most definitely want to employ higher-skilled and more experienced personnel over a potential newbie. this means that the thousands of tech-related Job seekers and graduates out there waiting to hop on new jobs will have their chances slashed for a while as they are now facing really formidable competition from the ex Andelians.
So, with the kind of experience and exposure, these laid-off Andela talents have, it is a big boost for other local tech companies because they’ll have better skills in their grasp, but a blow in the faces of fresh graduates seeking jobs in that aspect as the Andela folks have a greater edge.
Finally, the released Andela talents can also bolster Nigeria’s tech niche in other varieties of ways. At Andela, these people were specialised at certain aspects of expertise, now that they’re free, their great minds can push them into trying something quite different, example, Blockchain development which will be a win-win for both the developers and the Nigerian tech scene as a whole.
Andela has over 1500 engineers, and will most definitely continue to make profits. We will continue to follow up on the development of this situation and hope it yields a good outcome.
