Andela is a two-year-old company that offers the people of Africa the opportunity to learn how to develop software. According to
the company's own website, it selects the top 1 percent of tech talent from the African
continent and then shapes them into "world-class technical leaders" before being paired with companies as full-time team
members.
Andela's initiative is bold and caught the attention of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB)'s CEO Mark Zuckerberg who invested several millions of dollars in the startup
through his Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
According to CNN
Money, Andela banked $24 million in a round of financing led by the Chan Zuckerberg initiative and also received financing from
GV (formerly Google Ventures).
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"There are five open jobs in the U.S. for every software developer looking for one. It is a challenged ecosystem," CNN Money
quoted Jeremy Johnson, Andela's cofounder and CEO as saying. "We're able to tap into what I argue is the largest pool of untapped
brain power in the world."
Andela plans on using its latest round of financing to expand its network of developers and launch in a third African country
before 2017. The startup already operates in Kenya and Nigeria, where it employs nearly 200 engineers in its offices.
Andela has already partnered with notable technology companies including International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:
IBM), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Facebook, among others.
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