Over the years, Africa has seen the emergence of software developers who have gone ahead to build unicorns in startups, and create products that are solving global challenges, however, this hasn’t changed the fact that the continent has a dearth of software talents.
This development rises from the massive exodus of these software engineers from Africa to other continents owing to what appears to be an underpayment of their services.
On the other hand, who fills the gap of the exited software engineers? The African continent has a large young population, however, there is a challenge in getting them to get certified in software engineering skills.
In the eventuality of getting the skills, how easy would it be easy for them to secure high-paying jobs without leaving the comfort of their countries?
LuTA, a digital school at the forefront of digital education in Africa, wants to solve this problem.
We spoke with Kolawole Akinsumbo, Co-founder of LuTA on how the platform wants to unlock global opportunities with code and no-code tech skills.
From Admin to web development, tell us about the transition
My journey in tech or web development started when I was at the university. It was a common practice in Nigeria, where your secondary school tends to determine the department you belong to through some assessment, and even on getting to the University, you are not necessarily given the cost you want to learn.
I found myself in the commercial class in secondary school, then ended up choosing business administration, at the University.
While writing ICAN at the University, I started growing a penchant for technology, and I asked myself, ‘Why can’t I take this exam online?’
It was a crazy idea to those I mentioned the idea to at that time, and that was where the foresight to expand my interest in technology.
Then I began the self-taught process of web development, learning HTML, CSS, and the like. I spent my holidays learning all these things and by the time I returned to my second year.
I had built my first website, however, I couldn’t upload it to the web server, I was just showing fellow students on my PC.
On reaching 300 level, I eventually uploaded my website to the WorldWideWeb and on getting to 400 level I had already built more than 20 websites for people and I started making money.
That’s how I transitioned but what influenced my decision is the foresight I had for technology, I knew that technology would become a big deal and I want to play right in the middle of it.
What challenges have you encountered, and what are the necessary skills to succeed as a software engineer?
My ups and down are very personal, one of my early limiting factors was my parents not believing that one can make a living by simply working on your computer. When I finished University, I didn’t bother to seek a job, as I was bidding to get web development gigs.
What are the skills required? For me, I do tell people I spend 40-60% of my time everyday learning and acquiring new skills, when it comes to tech, things are changing every day, I spent time learning things outside software engineering, soft skills including communication, negotiation because these are important skills software engineers lack as they tend to focus more on their technical skills.
I believe that both technical and soft skills should be balanced. I also refresh my skills too, resharpening my knowledge in C+, JavaScript, PHP, React, I also go back to old languages too. The key is to learn every day and don’t stop learning.
Tell us about your founder’s journey.
I have launched several startups in the past and then some of them failed before taking off, I remember when Jumia started in Nigeria, months after I started Buynowng. I didn’t understand funding so I was struggling to keep up with expenses until the startup died without anybody even knowing it.
I then went on to found Nibi.ng and got a $150,000 investment that I rejected because the investor demanded 50-50, I thought I had invested in more than that, however, it died a natural death.
In May of this year, I officially launched LuTA Tech School (simply called LuTA).
All through my journey as a software engineer, I have been training people, with some of them joining big technology companies.
During the lockdown. I trained more than 200 Nigerians online from the comfort of my house under my name and not in the name of any company.
I stopped the training when the lockdown was eased, however, I continued to receive calls about giving training classes.
Not until January this year, that I started realizing thousands of Nigerians are jobless despite having lots of jobs in tech while some students are at home wasting away their time with no foresight of the future in technology.
My heart became burdened, thus I began to think of what can I do for the young generation. So I became interested in solving two problems in the young generation, the first one is giving them access to markets, and helping them acquire in-demand skills that can be globally recognized.
The second problem, on the other hand, is to reduce unemployment rates across Africa. The third would be to breach the talent gap.
If you interview 10 people for a job right now, you will discover that eight of them are not technology savvy. The world is driving towards technology.
Africa is lacking in the human resource capacity for technology. In some countries of the world, coding has been introduced into elementary subjects.
Sometime in 2019, I wrote the University of Lagos to offer lecturing service for free to students studying technology-related courses because I am well experienced professionally, and have MSc in information technology and science.
Unfortunately, the school never responded, however, I am still open to lecturing my expertise for free in any higher institution. This influenced the founding of LuTA which was incorporated in the United States and registered here in Nigeria.
Announcing our application on our website, we had over 8,412 entries in two weeks and went ahead to select more than 482.
LuTA officially launched in May 2022, we have over 12,000 applications and we have trained for free over 100 people in UI/UX design, front and backend development.
We have secured fully paid internships for 21 Young people. We are solving the problem of employment skill gap, to gap etc.
How can digital education unlock global opportunities for Africa?
First, the government needs to wake up. Though in recent times, there have been conferences with governments and private tech professionals, however, the government needs to work on and understand that Africa needs to rise and take its place in technology.
Africa has the largest human resources, especially in Nigeria, Nigeria’s biggest resource is not oil, but its human resources, a country of no less than 80 million young people, Africa has not less than 900 million young people, and it is fortunate for us, that human can be exported as natural resources.
Some countries do that in hospitality. I know the Philippines, they export their human resources as export in hotel hospitality and travel.
Private organizations are already doing what they can do. How can this unlock some opportunities for Africa?
Digital education in Africa is still at an early stage. Because how many digital universities do we have already in Africa?
I have my master’s degree in Information science from the University of Ibadan in 2012, and you can imagine being taught a course like Database Management on the board in this 21st century. But do you blame the lecturer? However, the schools need to wake up.
The government also needs to support digital schools like LuTA to become globally recognized, as this will afford more people an opportunity to international markets.
Nigeria currently has a shortage of software engineers and considering the exodus of software engineers, especially from Nigerian banks, the shortage is deepening.
Many years from now almost everything will become digitalized, and Nigeria needs to export more human resources in tech. South Africa for instance has done a lot of remittance into their economy from exporting superstores and telecoms services.
The more digital education is empowered, the more global opportunities and growth. Imagine having to remit millions of dollars back to Nigeria from software engineering jobs.
As Nigeria/Africa harnessed its software engineering talent enough?
For instance, Nigeria as a country is still struggling with electronic voting, and voter registration. People abroad cannot vote.
Government ministries still do lots of manual work. LuTA recently partnered with a government parastatal and we had to sign a document that had to be sent by courier, which could easily be done electronically.
The government continues to wonder why startups are becoming unicorns in Africa, but it isn’t far-fetched because startups understand the nitty-gritty of technology and are driven by it.
LuTA has trained hundreds of people and we never met them physically except for meetups and a significant number of them are already working for multi-national organizations.
Nigeria/Africa hasn’t even scratched the surface in terms of development or growth.
How is LuTA changing the digital narrative?
One of our goals is to become the Harvard of Africa, a digital institution, running an entire University of Technology without the four walls of a school to achieve our mission which includes access to an international market, reducing unemployment and bridging the digital divide, we want to eliminate poverty by global access to markets and we aim to train 1 million people within the next one year.
As of now, we have trained 100 people and we still believe that with the right support and investments, we will achieve our goal.
LuTA has trained across 4 African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa) and 2 European countries (Germany, Italy), not leaving out the United States, Turkey and UAE with 15 professional mentors across companies like Google Microsoft, and Amazon.
LuTA is hoping to raise its first pre-seed soon and is also open to other forms of investment.
Don’t miss important articles during the week. Subscribe to techbuild.africa weekly digest for updates.
