Why I Started Tunga, a Market Network for African Software Programmers
As a tech startup entrepreneur I experienced first hand how annoying it is if you can’t move forward because you don’t have the right software coder available. At Mobbr, we figured out a way to have coders from anywhere work in our Github workflow and distribute money among them in line with their contribution. But each time we actually needed them it was still a major hassle to find and engage them.
That’s why I decided end of 2014 that we needed to create our own on-demand workforce. A place where I could connect with people who want to work for me before the moment I actually need them. Where I could just dump a link to our Github workflow, have it show up in my followers’ notification streams, pledge a fee and arrange the payment once the work is done. A sort of marketplace meets social network: a market network.
But where could I find a motivated workforce that can deliver solid quality at affordable fees? Being a social entrepreneur who always looks for Shared Value opportunities, I found the answer in Africa. It turned out that a design studio called Butterfly Works — that was also working from the Netherlands — had been involved in setting up digital design schools under the Bits Academy umbrella throughout Africa already since 2000. Here was a robust community of 6000+ alumni that had the skills and the willingness to work on international software projects, and to top it off, was built for the social good!
Fast forward to today: we gathered funding from a host of donors to test whether this concept can actually work. We vetted a launching group of around 60 coders from Uganda and Kenya. We ran a successful pilot with 14 paying customers in the fall of 2015, many of whom kept on working with the coders. And since a few weeks, we have a first prototype live online that gradually is being used to build flexible teams of coders that can be mobilized on-demand.
Tunga stands for almost everything that makes my heart tick faster: self-empowerment, human connections, innovation and social impact. We are still at the beginning of our journey, but so far, it seems like we’re off to a good start! If you want to find out how it continues, please follow this channel on Medium, or on Facebook or Twitter. And don’t hesitate to share ideas and feedback in the comments.
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