Top tech talent is hard to come by, and while NYC is a hub for some of the greatest minds in the industry, there are still more great ideas than there are people to make them happen.
That’s the challenge Andela is looking to overcome — and they just landed a $40 million Series C funding round to do it. By recruiting talent from a number of cities in Africa, the company is filling the demand and helping those cities become a tech hub of their own. Candidates complete a developer training program and work in the United States. Once their contract is over, they can either continue working in the U.S. or go back home and bring their knowledge with them.
“Over the past three years, we’ve helped prove to the world that brilliance is evenly distributed,” CEO and co-founder Jeremy Johnson said in a statement. “It’s now time to prove that our model of investing in extraordinary people isn’t just viable, but revolutionary.”
The round was led by CRE Venture Capital, with participation from DBL Partners, Amplo, Salesforce Ventures, TLcom Capital and existing investors. Before that, it raised $24 million in Series B funding led by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the brainchild of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.
“African technologists will be launching high-impact companies and solving some of the world's most pressing problems, and this round will help that happen faster,” Johnson said in a statement.
As part of the deal, Pule Taukobong of CRE, Julia Gillard, former Australian Prime Minister and Amplo Board Partner, and Omobola Johnson, Senior Partner at TLcom and former Minister of Communication Technology in Nigeria, will join Andela’s board. The funding will be put toward expanding to other countries in Africa.
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