Developers Haven in Kenya

Caspar Coding workers. Photo by Caspar Coding

The IT industry holds a huge stack for future developments in the world, and more youths in Africa are gladly joining the tech industry as more resources and opportunities become available. Like a commitment by Google to train 100K developers across Africa in 5 years, in March 2018, a 15,000 Google Africa Scholarship challenge to provide Android and Web development training. Companies like Caspar Coding, an ICT outsourcing company that started as a helping hand for young driven IT gurus in Kenya has had to spread their wings to Ghana, Uganda, and Nigeria. 

Founded by the Dutch Sebastiaan Tan and Vincent Wijdeveld, in 2018. Sebastiaan says that they connect software developers from Africa with job opportunities in Europe, Africa, and Canada. He remembers when he came to Kenya in 2014, NGOs were mentoring people towards traditional jobs like accounting that may be absolute in the next 10 years due to automation. But when he returned again in 2017 the trend was totally different; more young people were involved in tech studies and jobs. 

“There were a lot of bright people with years of experience thanks to companies like Andela,” Sebastiaan says. “Initially this project was for Kenya to West Europe countries. We started by building remote teams but found out that learning and growing opportunities were very limited. Working remotely offered less challenging work for our teams. Our developers were also looking into ways of self relocation.” 

Caspar Coding configured a beautiful way to get developers to move to Europe for a couple of years for experience. They would then bring back the knowledge to Africa. “We didn’t force anyone to make a choice. I’m very happy that we live at an age where people can make independent choices. They also didn’t have to come back, but we hoped they did.” He adds.

Sebastiaan Tan working in their Nairobi office.

As a company, they were offering them an opportunity to work in a tech scene in Europe, which was a bit more mature, and they could learn more. They also understood how hard it was to obtain a visa or work permit for European countries because the company hiring must be able to prove that it has made an intense effort to fill the position with an EU citizen or an employee who has an outstanding career. “However, most European countries were open to working with us and giving permanent visas to our employees. There was a big demand for tech guys in Europe. But you had to be experienced in tech for a couple of years to apply.” He says.  

With 200 million people aged between 15 and 24, Africa has the largest population of young people in the world. The youths also account for 60% of all of Africa’s jobless, according to the World Bank. In North Africa, the youth unemployment rate is 25% but is even greater in Botswana, the Republic of the Congo, Senegal, and South Africa, among others. 

Caspar Coding clients range from F500 companies like ING to startups like Young Capital. They have linked 60 developers to employment. Sebastiaan says he is very proud of 31-year-old Amos Kosgei, their first developer from Kenya in the program to move to Europe. Amos, a Java developer, has worked in the tech industry for 12 years. He was inspired by ING bank, one of the few big banks in the world. “A lot of corporations and banks are struggling with the new technology. But this bank is number one to have its digital transformation right. We also have Benjamin Kagia working with Betty Blocks, an application development platform in the Netherlands,” Sebastiaan says.    

 

According to Sebastiaan, COVID hit its business model hard because of the traveling restrictions. Aburbak, a Ghanaian with 9 years of expertise in Python and DevOps started his new job for an online marketing company, Regiohelden in Germany has had to work remotely because of the constraints of COVID-19 on travel. Eventually, he will relocate to Germany to work with his new colleagues from their headquarters. “For the future opportunities we are keeping both options open; working remotely or moving abroad,” he adds.

An IT person working remotely from Kenya. 

Just like any entrepreneurship, there are ups and downs, more so for Africa, they are extreme compared to Europe. Caspar Coding has experienced its share of challenges. They spent a lot of time getting the company legally registered in Kenya. They also had a hard time setting up because most developers in the remote team always had a side hustle, unlike in Europe. This meant the several side hustle interfered with the learning process and the jobs. “Our model is based on the traditional employee, employer relationship where we trust that the tech leader here or the CTO in Europe to be in total communication with developers here. We would stay out of the communication as much as possible, only to find out later that some clients were dropping out because certain expectations were not met,” says Sebastiaan. In the future, Caspar Coding stands on three pillars. They hope to employ as many people as possible. To inspire young people to study tech because of its many opportunities. Also, to support young developers to open tech companies to energize the economy. “Even though Rwanda is known for being a leader in Africa for IT, we choose Kenya as a base because their quality software developers are better, and the huge number of young people. This young demographic is very interesting and very hopeful. The weather is also amazing. ” Sebastiaan says. Sebastiaan says that Africa as a whole is quickly picking up in the tech industry. However, they are missing acknowledgment from the rest of the world that is biased towards Africa. There is a big demand for developers in Amsterdam, and work can be done remotely. “I have been going back and forth to Europe pitching to different companies. When a job comes into our database with a coding challenge, we let all our developers do the challenge, and the client gets to choose the best. So we do not influence who the clients work with,” he says. For their work, Caspar Coding has been nominated for the 2020 Seedstars Migration Challenge. The award looks to reward innovative early-stage Human Resources, FinTech, CivicTech, and EdTech start-ups with solution-oriented products to improve migration systems that respond to labor market needs.