State Of the Code 2018: Results from the survey on the state of coding in Ivory Coast

Members of the Code D’Ivoire (Ivory Code) community

Code d’Ivoire (Ivory Code) is a community of code junkies and developers that launched in March 2018. It functions right now mostly as a Slack channel, where our members get to interact every day and keep the lines of communication open. Our mission revolves around the following objectives:

• Become a home for coders, where members can find kindred spirits
• Share knowledge, best practices and technology needed to help the larger developper community grow in skills (“A rising tide lifts all boats”).
• Promote the coding craft and professions in Ivory Coast et help the country become an African and global showcase for coding abilities.

We’ve started a set of activities in Abidjan to further these goals along that can be summarized as:

• Produce written code tutorials that our currently shared on our community blog on Medium (https://medium.com/code-divoire)
• Produce video tutorials and lectures shared every Wednesday on our Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/codedivoire) in our Code Moderne (Modern Code) series.
• Showcase Made in CI (Ivory Coast) tools.
• Take a pulse of the coding profession and training through an annual survey, State of the Code.

The State of the Code Survey

In this first ever run of this yearly survey, we wanted to take stock of the current state of coding in Ivory Coast, more precisely:

• Who are the developers of Ivory Coast?
• What are the technologies, processes and languages they know and use?
• How were they trained?
• What are their achievements and challenges?
• How much do they earn?
• How do they feel about their craft?
• How do they feel about their ecosystem?

The costs associated with the survey this year were covered by par the Ivorian technology startup AKIL Technologies and the survey was run over 4 months (March to July 2018) through a 38 questions online form shared through the community’s social media network in order to maximize the number of respondents. The survey completed with 88 respondents total. In this article, we wanted to color the survey results by including our own analysis and the pertinent ones from the members of the community that attended our first afterwork event where the survey results were first shared on July 13th 2018 at 7:00PM at the offices of AKIL Technologies. Email us for any questions at codeivoire.io at gmail.com.

Results

Question by question, we’ll first present the answers, then give our own analysis for each.

Question 1

Question 1: You are?

The gender gap imbalance is still very strong in the coding world, with 93% to 7% in favor of men. Getting more girls involved in STEM is crucial, as we said during the event, let’s encourage more of our own sisters, cousins and female friends to pursue technology and scientific carriers.

Question 2

Question 2: How old are you?

With 92% of respondents between 18 and 34, Ivorian developers are young, with the majority (62%) between 25 and 34. We would advance that it is crucial to ensure that this majority is well trained in the modern coding and development technologies as they stand today and grow, and this to ensure that by the time this generation reaches the next level of their career in the next 5 years they are well positioned to mentor and train the following batch.

Question 3

Question 3:What do you work most of the time?

Most developers consider themselves Full Stack (39.5%), followed by Front End Development (30%). To better understand these numbers, it must be understood that Full Stack now in Ivory Coast means developing applications using the older multi page model, as done on .php .jsp .asp type of applications where server side data and HTML and JS are mixed and rendered before being sent back to the client as opposed to the decoupled modern model of SPA frontends and RESTful API backends.

Question 4

Question4: What programming languages have you learned during your studies?

PHP is king in Ivory Coast with over 86% of respondents having learned it during their studies. What was really surprising here was the sheer number of developers that used Pascal (43%!) and Windev, a proprietary French framework (22%) during their training given the rather minimal or inexistant market share of these technologies in the current coding ecosystem. This could indicate a problem at the training level (Re-train the trainers) though community members noted that using Pascal for learning basic algorithms was a valid use of the language. Others noted that it went further than basic training since some business applications are still being developed and maintained using Pascal.

Question 5

Question 5: What programming languages have you used so far to build your applications?

PHP (80%) and Javascript (82.4%) confirm here their dominance when it comes to building applications in Ivory Coast. Java (37.6%) and Python (24.7%) are represented, well ahead of C# (18.8%) which is not too far ahead of proprietary niche Windev (16.5%). In terms of databases, SQL dominates at 50%, far ahead of NoSQL at 10%. During the event, this part launched furious debates where the following issues came to light concerning the current developer ecosystem and job market:

• There is a lack of precision in the job descriptions and responsibilities by local companies looking to hire developers where they don’t always know how to translate their needs into a job description that would attract the right type of talent. This was noted on by one of our community members who penned an article urging Ivorian developers not to take on this type of jobs anymore.
• Related would be a better training for employers so they better understand the different skills required (DEV, QA, Design, Devops etc…)to solve a business problem using technology.
• There are widespread issues with project cost estimates, which makes it difficult to staff projects properly
• Developers experience difficulties delivering on projects because of constant customer requested changes during the development cycle, even when requirements were clearly established at the onset
• Developers, especially freelancers are experiencing great difficulties getting paid a fair wage, when they’re getting paid at all. Fair wages are hard to get because customers are used to very low prices being unable to properly appreciate the work required to build applications, and this coupled with the fact that there are always entry level developers willing to accept these low wages to gain experience makes it very difficult to get paid a good wage. Furthermore, it’s not uncommon for customers to just renege on the payment agreement and refuse to pay, or just limit payment to the advance that was paid for the lucky ones.
• Requirement gathering is not always done properly
• There is a fear of change within businesses, which makes it difficult to introduce new technologies. This is partly due to existing leadership trained in obsolete technologies who by self preservation instinct are fiercely resistant to any change that would jeopardize their status. There is also the case of businesses just not wanting to rock the boat, or are just unconvinced of the business value of upgrading or improving their online and mobile presence, which as noted by one member of the community, is partly the fault of developers for not making the business case.

Question 6

Question 6: Which programming languages would you like to learn next or dive in to build your next applications?

In terms of interest, Python seems the most fascinating to Ivorian developers (60%) followed by Java (55.4%) and Javascript (51.8%). NoSQL is generating some interested (33%), just as C#(28.9%). The reason behing Python’s popularity is its flexibility in being applied to different types of development tasks, from machine learning, to web development to scripting.

Question 7

Question 7: Which frameworks, tools and libraries do you use for the client side of your web applications?

As obvious here, using SPAs is not standard practice in Ivory Coast. Angular is most popular at 34%, followed by VueJS at 16% and worldwide leader React at 9.6%! The Bootstrap/HTML/JQuery/Pure Javascript model is much more popular as previously noted because the standard type of applications being built is multi-page currently. Nevertheless, the transition to the modern decoupled model is happening slowly but would gain to accelerate to get up to modern standards, which is one of our objectives for Code D’Ivoire. VueJS is more popular than React simply because it is associated with Laravel, a PHP framework that is well used within the ecosystem.

Question 8

Question 8: Which frameworks, tools, and libraries do you use for the server side of your applications?

On the server side, we were surprised to see a CMS backend like Wordpress come out on top at 40% of respondents (with Drupal at 11.3% and Joomla at 11%). Javascript with NodeJS came at 36%, and PHP with Laravel at 32.5% and Symfony at 25%. Java with Springboot is the more popular J2EE (18.8%) framework at 25%. .Net yields 16.5%, just below Django at 17.5%. We find some inconsistencies in these answers with previous answers, and we hope to be able to clarify these numbers through our following surveys and our ground actions.

Question 9

Question 9: What database are you using?

MySQL very easily is the most popular database given its natural link to PHP. SQL is king here, with an insignificant market share for NoSQL.

Question 10

Question 10: What code quality control and deployment techniques are you using for your applications?

50% of developers claim to use a continuous integration process with 47% claiming to use unit tests. Based on our common ground experience, we are skeptical of the accuracy of these numbers in terms of actual practice. We think that most of the respondents answered this question in terms of their theoretical knowledge of the listed techniques rather than their actual practice. The only number we feel confident about are the 22% that claim to use Gitlab CI, since it’s free and deeply integrated with their Git platform, which makes its use easy.

Question 11

Question 11: How are your applications deployed?

65% of applications are deployed manually, against 32.5% deployed automatically while a small number use a mixed approach.

Question 12

Question 12: Through which platforms do you deploy your applications?

Almost 70% of applications are deployed though classic web hosts ( non Cloud like AWS/Heroku/Digital Ocean), meaning more than likely FTP operations. Google Play surprisingly comes through in second position with 22%, suggesting a small lively Android development ecosystem.

Question 13

Question 13: Which frameworks, tools or libraries do you use to build mobile apps?

In de mobile development world, Java and Android dominate here with 56% of mobile developers on the platforms. Hybrid and Javascript mobile development come next with 44% of the market. React Native is slightly more popular than its web sibling, locking in 12 percent of mobile developers.

Question 14

Question 14: Which platforms do you build your applications for?

Like in the rest of the word, web is the primary deployment platform for applications built in Ivory Coast with 94% of answers. What we found interesting is that coming in second are desktop applications at 51.8%, ahead of mobile at 33.7%.

Question 15

Question 15: How do you handle source code management for your applications?

For source code management, although a majority of developers use Git (Github at 66.7%, Gitlab at 33.3% and Bitbucket at 27.2%), the story here is the absurd 37% who don’t use any source code management tool! In a modern environment this is just not acceptable, and in the audience we heard funny but horrific anecdotes about manual source code management techniques (by email or zip files). In a modern ecosystem, this number should be 0 given the widespread availability of free Git (Gitlab/Bitbucket) offerings.

Pour la gestion de code source, bien qu’une majorité des developpers utilisent Git (GitHub a 66.7%, GitLab a 33.3% et BitBucket à 27.2%), le nombre étonnant ici est l’absurde 37% qui n’utilise aucun logiciel de gestion de code source!!! Ce n’est juste pas acceptable dans un environnement moderne, et nous avons entendu des anecdotes horrifiques bien que drole sur les “techniques” de gestion de code source manuelle (par email ou fichiers zip). Dans un écosystème moderne ce nombre devrait être 0% étant donné la gratuité des offres Git (Gitlab/BitBucket) disponibles.

Question 16

Question 16:Do you have a Github account?

80% of Ivorian developers have a Github account.

Question 17

Question 17:Do you have a Gitlab account?

55% of Ivorian developers have a Gitlab account.

Question 18

Question 19: Do yo BitBucket?

62% of Ivorian developers have a Bitbucket account.

Question 19

Question 19: Quels techniques de gestions de projet avez vous utilise?

55% of developers report using an Agile project management technique, with 31% using Scrum and 12.9% Kanban. 18% report using no project management technique. Here just like with Question 10 about code quality techniques, we think that the results recorded are doubtful when one is familiar with what is happening in practice. We can wonder here also if respondents answered the question thinking more about the techniques they know or heard about rather than what they actually use at work.

Question 20

Question 20: Which project management tools have you used?

Trello is the most popular project management tool with 50% of votes. Excel (A local developer favorite) comes in second with 25% of the votes. Heavyweight JIRA is only used by 9.2% of developers, less than the 11% who use no tool at all.

Question 21

Question 21: How did you learn software development?

It’s not surprising that 79.8% of developers consider themselves self taught, given the ever-learning nature of the craft. In terms of formal training, private colleges train 58.3 of developers, double of the public universities who train 26% of Ivorian developers.

Question 22

What is your highest level of education?

The 3 year degree locally known as the license is the most common among developers, following by the 2 year BTS (License for Superior Technician ). The 4 year Engineer degree comes in at almost 21% of developers while the 5 to 6 year Master is held by 15.6% of developers.

Question 23

Question 23:How much do you earn in net salary?

This question is the one that generated the most emotion and reactions during our presentation. 30% of developers earn less than €375/$435 US per month , while 25.6% earn between €375/$435 to €750/$900 per month. Only 3.8 % of developers earn more than €750/$900 per month, the same as those earning more than €3000 euros/$3400 US per month. The ongoing joke during the presentation went about revealing the identities of those high earning developers so they could share the wealth.

Question 24

Question 24: What is your current work status?

Most developers work as full time employees (30.6%) or contractors (17.6%). 13% are currently looking for a job, and 4.7% are looking for an internship while 15.3 are currently in an internship. 18.8% of respondents are still students.

Question 25

Question 25: If you’re working full time or in an internship, are you happy with your job?

Developers are moderately happy with their jobs, with 39.7% considering themselves moderately happy, 36.5% are just happy, more than double the 14% that consider themselves unhappy.

Question 26

Question 26:If you’re looking for a job, are you happy with your training?

For developers looking for a job, a majority consider themselves moderately happy with their training, 29.6% are happy will 20.4% are unhappy. During the presentation, community members came up with the following issues to explain these numbers:

• There is a big gap between the skills taught in school and the skills needed on the job market.
• There is a need to “train the trainers”, because of outdated computer science curriculums still being taught.
• There is a need to share more knowledge between experienced developers and junior ones, so more mentorship programs.

Question 27

Question 27: What would increase your happiness in your current job?

Developers with a job are more motivated by the opportunity to learn new technologies in their job than by money or more responsibilities. This is not different than other developers in the world who are more motivated when working on a technology they’re excited about.

Question 28

Question 28: What would increase your satisfaction with your training or education?

When it comes to training, developers want more hands on learning (90.3%), which is supported by the fact that the second most important factor is the opportunity to intern (61.1%).

Question 29

Question 29: How do you find your job or internship opportunities?

Having a good personal network seems like a good way to find developer jobs in Ivory Coast with 64.9% of developers declaring find new jobs through that mean. Close second are local job sites, with 62.3% proving the worth and usefulness of these local apps.

Question 30

Question 30: Ou travaillez vous?

Remote is not yet part of the developer job culture in Ivory Coast, with 65% of developers working on site, and 27% doing both. Only 7% of developers work full remote, more than likely freelancers who work for overseas companies.

Question 31

Question 31: Would you like to work remote more?

Clearly, more developers would love to work remotely (88.6%)

Question 32

Question 32: Which developer community do you belong to?

Developer communities are well represented in Ivory Coast with the Google Developer Group coming first, our own members from Code D’Ivoire second, and the other communities like Akendewa, Wordpress Cote d’Ivoire and Objis (Java ) represented. At Code d’Ivoire we’re planning to reach out to more of these communities to plan and execute impactful ground actions together as we believe we are all working towards the same goal.

Question 33

Question 33:How would you rate your command of English in relation to learning coding?

41.2% of French speaking Ivorian developers think they have an average grasp of English, where 34.1% consider themselves having a good grasp. 12% claim an excellent grasp while 13% think they have a poor grasp. In our discussions, developers clarified that their grasp on English was just enough to extract the necessary written information to be able to do their job, like searching Google or StackOverflow. For spoken English, getting a good grasp is more difficult and makes learning by video tutorials for example tougher.

Question 34

Question 34: Do you think that a better grasp of English would make you a better developer?

89% of respondents here think that a better grasp of English would make them better developers. In the discussions, developers were referring to a better spoken command of English. In summary, a better mastery of English represents a direct line to everything that is produced daily in modern development, which is done primarily in English. This topic is worth exploring and in our 2019 edition as well as our internal community conversations we’ll try to keep the discussion going to come with more insights.

Question 36

Question 36: What do you think of the Ivorian developer ecosystem

In general, Ivorian developers are not happy with the current ecosystem with 50.6% giving an average 3/5 stars, 30.6% rating it 2/5 stars and 10.6% rating it 1/5 stars. Only 6% would rate it 4/5 stars and 2.4% would give it a perfect 5/5. These numbers, combined with the open comments we recorded express a frustration with other developers when they’re not sharing knowledge, businesses for not valuing developers enough and schools for not training properly for the job market.

Question 35: Do you have any particular comments on the developer ecosystem in Ivory Coast?

Chosen comments.

Traditional academic training is not up to contemporary challenges. Those from these formations also have a rather low interest in the duration for the practice of development in a general way

Very closed and no collaboration between the actors. No spreading of knowledge from experienced to beginners

The dev ecosystem in Ivory Coast is not very practical. Indeed the projects are sometimes done independently that is to say that a project can be on the backend and another on the frontend. It would be better to develop projects that bring together the back end and the front end. Also it should be mentioned that our higher training institutions are not always up to date in training in terms of development technology

It’s better to start as an self taught programmer and focus on practice. Having a community as a reference is also important. A school (renowned can guarantee a fast internship on graduation) but it is no longer necessary. I graduated as an Engineer, that’s the feeling I have.

The majority of those who have the knowledge spend their time being cocky instead of sharing with others. They all want to answer the enigma of who is the best Ivorian dev. They don’t care about Ivory Coast and what position in the dev world we have, even in Africa. When people talk about Ivory Coast and IT I think people think more about “brouteurs” (online scammers) than computer scientists. I think the Made in CI project is a good start because Ivorian devs can see the list of projects made by other Ivorian devs. I think that with a little time there will be advanced collaborations on projects that can lead to major innovations. We’re sleeping to much guys.

An ecosystem full of talent but still much to learn in terms of sharing, and knowledge of self worth. The developer’s job is not really respected as it needs to be by the government.

I think we should create online coding classes.

Firms do not like hired developers. There are even firms that are (still) offering internships (to people) with many years of experience

I think it’s growing in strength. I wish one day to host my websites on servers installed in Côte D’Ivoire

Summary

We are happy with the results of this first survey because they give us data on which we can build to focus our actions on the ground. There is still much work to be done to transform the Ivorian developer ecosystem into a global model for skills and innovation, but we believe we have taken a small step here. If you share our excitement for the future of the Ivory Coast, and for the potential of the Ivorian developers, join us to make your contribution to the work, and contribute to the rising tide of Made in CI code.

Email us for any questions at codeivoire.io at gmail.com.