Andela and Code for Africa Announce Strategic Partnership To Accelerate Civic Innovation In Africa
The partnership will significantly contribute to scaling civic technology in Africa
We are excited to announce our partnership with Andela.
Andela helps companies build high-performing engineering teams with the most talented developers from tech hubs across Africa.
Code for Africa will host and mentor a select group of developers from Andela.
Paired with technologists across the continent’s largest federation of civic tech labs, the Andela developers will spend their time contributing their skills in web technologies on technology for-good projects. This includes Open Gazettes, Health Tools, and openAFRICA among others.
These tools combine open source software, mobile tech and open data to improve government transparency and accountability, and to help deliver better information and services to citizens across the continent.
Code for Africa builds low-cost tech tools that can be shared among countries and adapted to meet local needs. The tools give citizens access to data that is typically hard to find, like local government spending on schools and clinics.
With this partnership, Andela’s tech talent together with Code for Africa — the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism initiative — , we hope to accelerate civic innovation by significantly contributing to and scaling the civic tech space in Africa.
This partnership is a unique opportunity for two pioneers in Africa to collaborate on developing and growing the open source, civic tech and data journalism community in Africa, extending the cross-sectoral opportunities for innovation in these spaces by adding to the civic talent pool in Africa.
“Andela developers will be building real-life projects that are being used by communities and citizens in several countries spread across Africa,” says Code for Africa’s Technology Lead, David Lemayian. “It’s a valuable opportunity for them to build, deploy, replicate, and scale civic tech projects,” he adds.
Since 2010 Code for Africa has fostered an incredible community of civic leaders, innovators and data journalists, through several civic labs in East, West and South Africa that provide both technical and data support to these communities.
The first Andela developers are based in Nairobi, and will later be joined by teams in Lagos and New York.
Andela is a global engineering organization that connects leading technology companies and talented software developers from around the world. We enable companies to build high-performing engineering teams while providing a platform for talented technologists to accelerate their expertise. Backed by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, GV (Google Ventures) and Spark Capital, Andela is building the next generation of global technology leaders.
Code for Africa is the continent’s largest federation of civic technology and open data laboratories, with affiliate members in 10 African countries and funded projects in a further 12 countries. CfAfrica manages the $1m/year innovateAFRICA.fund and $500,000/year impactAFRICA.fund, as well as key digital democracy resources such as openAFRICA.net and GotToVote.cc.
