A Lagos, Nigeria-based startup called Andela has announced that it has raised another $40 million in venture capital, bringing its total funding to $80 million. The company offers development training and contract jobs to people in Africa. Already more than 20,000 aspiring programmers have used the company’s free and paid tools, and it hopes to help 100,000 African software developers get jobs by 2024.
Using an extremely selective process that weeds out 99 percent of applicants, the firm hires people and trains them for six months before placing them in a job where they do remote development work for companies like Viacom, Mastercard Labs, GitHub and SeatGeek. Workers sign contracts to work for two years, but they are expected to stay for four. Salaries begin low but can rise to around $30,000. So far, the company’s retention rate is around 98 percent.
Investors in the startup include GV (formerly known as Google Ventures), Spark Capital and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
