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Andela finds the best and brightest students or programmers in Africa, trains them up, and places them in jobs at hot startups like Udacity and Fortune 500s like Microsoft. This startup which launched a year ago is disrupting the tech sphere by creating a new model for how companies hire and staff their talent.
With a 0.7% acceptance rate and a two-week boot camp to further refine that pool, Andela is one of the most selective tech training program in Africa. The lucky ones are admitted after a series of aptitude tests; then they go through intensive training sessions for six months. Those over 18 can apply and the average applicant age is 25.
Andela pays students to learn and provides them a wage that puts them in the top five percent of Nigerian earners. Students’ wages increase as they improve their skills. When they graduate, Andela helps them jumpstart their own companies or places them in tech roles at corporations.
Johnson’s is also the former CEO of 2U, a publicly-traded company that offers online graduate-level courses for credit. Johnson just closed a round of funding for Andela which he says was four times oversubscribed. Andela just closed series A funding led by venture capital firm Spark Capital. LearnCapital, Omidyar Network and others joined the round. With the financing, Johnson will close in on his plan to train 100,000 developers in Africa over the next decade. He also wants to send Andela students to other countries like Europe which is also experiencing a growing demand for developers.
Website: http://www.andela.com
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