A gap between African developers’ technical skills and their ability to earn from software is behind a new collaboration between SheCode Africa and Apify, aimed at helping women developers build and monetise software.
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Senior Developer Community Manager at Apify, Saurav Jain, said the company had identified a “huge gap” in the African market, where developers possess strong software skills but are unable to make money from them.
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“With time, we have noticed there is a huge gap in the African market where developers cannot really make money out of their software skills, but they definitely have very good, great developer skills,” he said.
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Jain said Apify’s previous developer challenge attracted a significant response from Africa and other parts of the world, but the company noticed that not enough women were participating in building software.
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He said the collaboration with SheCode Africa was aimed at helping local women developers in Nigeria build software and monetise it on Apify.
 
The partnership was showcased at the SheCode Africa–Apify BuildHer Hackathon 2026, a two-day hybrid programme that brought together women and girls from engineering tracks to develop solutions to real-time problems across areas including fintech and cybersecurity.
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Community Manager at SheCode Africa, Mfonobong Umondia, said the partnership was part of Apify’s effort to expand into African markets, with SheCode Africa serving as its first partner organisation in Africa for reaching developers to build Apify Actors.
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She said developers could make their Actors available to other users through the platform and, in the long run, monetise them.
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Jain said the hackathon would be assessed on five criteria, including technical quality, use of Apify, local community impact, local relevance and the quality of the demonstration.
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Community Associate at SheCode Africa, Oluwaseun Oladeji, said the top three teams would also receive direct access to the Apify team and participate in a live workshop, while other participants would continue receiving resources, workshops and technical support to improve their Actors.