Andela’s journey to develop Africa’s most talented technologists

By Alex Finkelstein

Today, Andela announced that they’ve raised a $40 million Series C led by CRE Venture Capital, one of the first pan-African venture funds. I wanted to take a moment to congratulate the team on their progress building the leading network of top software developers across the African continent.

Spark led Andela’s Series A in mid-2015. At the time, I truly believed in Jeremy, Christina, Ian and E’s vision to build the first elite engineering organization in Africa — an organization that could recruit the most talented technical minds on the continent, develop them, and place them as full-time team engineers with world-class tech companies. It was an audacious mission that this team was on. We jumped in with them.

Fast forward just a couple of years, and the company has exceeded our expectations for where they would be at this point. About a year after Andela raised their Series A, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative led the company’s $24 million Series B, a huge confirmation that they were at the forefront of an important shift in the way we think about where talented software developers come from.

Today, Andela is well on their way to helping companies build high-performing, distributed engineering teams with Africa’s most talented software developers. Andela has selected the top 0.7% of more than 70,000 applicants from across the continent. They now have campuses in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. Andela developers are working as full-time team members with 100+ partner companies across 45 cities that range from industry leaders like Viacom and Mastercard to venture-backed startups like Gusto and Github.

It’s been a thrill to support the team as they’ve worked incredibly hard to bring their early vision to life. There’s a lot more work to do, but it’s always good to take a moment to reflect on all that’s been accomplished.

Congratulations to the Andela team on today’s important milestone.

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