Iyinoluwa Aboyeji: The Tech Missionary

According to the National Bureau of Statistics in Nigeria, youth unemployment rose to 21.50% in the first quarter of 2016. And it’s not just Nigeria that has an unemployment problem. At the 51st annual meeting of the board of governors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) that took place in Lusaka in May, 2016, the AfDB president, Akinwunmi Adesina, stated that Africa has “a job crisis”.  Everyone agrees something needs to be done to curb the rising rate of unemployment, but what have we done beyond agreeing?

In a technologically-driven world, a company like Andela has sprung up to do its part in closing the unemployment gap. The company recruits Africans that are gifted tech-wise, trains them, and places them in international companies as full-time employees. The best part is that Andela pays these recruits to learn. What better way to utilize the continents untapped talent?

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, is the co-founder of Andela. Born and bred in Nigeria, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, or ‘E’ as he is fondly called, lived in Lagos, Abuja and Warri at different points in his life. He studied at the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada and graduated with a degree in Legal Studies. Despite his law degree, Iyin is a technology entrepreneur who has been mostly focused on new innovations in education technology and pedagogy over the last couple years. In that time, Iyinolowa has co-founded and worked with few companies in the field – like Bookneto, Fora and Zanbato. Of all his endeavours, Andela has by far been the most successful. So successful in fact, that it has been dubbed a company “harder to get into than Harvard” by CNN and is backed by both Google and Mark Zuckerberg.

GL had a chat with Iyinoluwa Aboyeji to talk about his company and his journey to positively impacting the lives of so many young Africans.

Can you briefly tell us about Andela and what it hopes to achieve?

Andela is founded on the simple truth that brilliance is evenly distributed, while opportunity is not. We recruit the most talented software developers on the African continent, shape them into world-class technical leaders, and place them as full-time team members with companies like Microsoft and IBM, working remotely from our offices in Lagos, Nigeria and Nairobi, Kenya.

What we are really trying to achieve with Andela is prove that brilliant young people, who can be groomed into world class technologists, exist in Africa. The case for this is simple; Over the next 30 years, Africa will be home to more than half of the world’s working population. We want young Africans to be part and parcel of building the world they will live in. This begins with exposing them to the companies and people that are building the future today so they can gain the requisite skills they need to do the same.

 What was your inspiration to start up Andela?

First of all, Andela was not my idea alone. My co-founder Jeremy Johnson and I sat down together and thought up this brilliant idea to train young people to be world class developers. We hoped to achieve this by leveraging some of the lessons he had learned from building 2U, a highly successful online education company in the US. For me, what inspired me to tap into this vision and really push it forward was seeing how unemployment, partly fuelled by an inadequate education system, was destroying young people. I remember seeing the NIS recruitment scandal on television and seeing hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people literally stampede themselves to untimely deaths because of youth unemployment. I resolved there had to be a better way.

What was the most difficult challenge you faced setting up Andela?

There were several challenges in Andela’s early days. Some of these challenges were wiring funds and moving equipment across continents, finding the appropriate space, power outages, long commute times for our developer, and even getting catered lunch to the campus on time. Considering all this, it is hard to say which the most difficult challenge was. However I am really glad to say we look on all our challenges very fondly today because they have made us the formidable operational juggernaut we are today. We have learnt a lot and grown from those challenges.

How did it feel to have Mark Zuckerberg and Google as strong backers of your company?

It certainly feels amazing. These are some of the greatest technologists and technology companies in the world who are saying, “Yes! We believe the next generation of world-class developers who will build the future will come from Africa”. Not just that, they are putting their money where their heart is. I couldn’t think of a better endorsement. The rest of the technology world is clearly rooting for African developers. Now we have to rise to the challenge and prove them all right.

Considering the limited access to certain resources we have in Africa, how would you describe the talent you have sourced thus far?

Amazing talent. I’ll tell you one thing; Jeremy and I have applied several times to the fellowship and we couldn’t even get in. Every single one of our developers went through a pretty gruelling 180 day recruitment process with a 0.7% success rate and got in. Now I might be dumb but Jeremy got into Princeton so I’m sure he’s not. I think that’s just a testament to the incredible talent we have sourced so far. I remember really early on, I think in the second class, we worked with a global psychometric testing consulting company to assess our applicant pool and they point blank told us these are among some of the most intelligent people in the world. Period.  No doubt, there is amazing talent in Africa; we just have to invest in developing our talent to its fullest potential.

What would you say is your strongest motivation?

My greatest motivation is my desire to build the future of Africa. I wake up everyday thinking about it. I really believe it is what God placed me on earth to do. The truth is we really don’t have a choice. We can sit here and moan about how disadvantaged and poor we are today – or we can roll up our sleeves and really start to do the hard work of building the talent, systems and infrastructure we need to make this continent better for future generations. I think we need more people doing the latter and all I think about everyday is “how do we build the future of this continent?”

At this point, would you consider yourself successful?

Well, firstly, I am definitely nowhere near successful by any objective measure. And, more importantly, I care a lot more about impacting the lives of others by building the future of this continent than I do about being personally successful. Being “successful” – whatever that means – isn’t really a thing for me.

Looking towards the future, what can we expect from you?

More building. Andela is on a great path to building a movement of young people with the skills to leverage technology to build the future of this continent. However, there is a lot more work to do. Expect to find me in the trenches doing that kind of work.

What advice do you have for people who look up to you as a source of inspiration?

I have a lot of advice but I would say everything really boils down to finding your mission in life. The world needs missionaries – people who live with an incredible sense of mission. Mine is to build the future of Africa. What’s yours?

We believe Iyinoluwa is absolutely right.  In as much as we need visionaries, we need missionaries who are willing to get their hands dirty and do the work. We all have our own roles to play, and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji is lighting the path for others by fulfilling his part as best he can.