A recent report released by tech giant Google shows that software developers in the information technology sector are in high demand globally, with 38% of them working with companies outside the African continent. The number surged during the worldwide lockdowns during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Africa Developer Ecosystem report, the data was gathered from seventeen countries in Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Ivory Coast. Others are Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.
The survey sampled 1,600 software developers all of whom are resident in Africa and found that more than a third of them worked for at least one foreign company.
Nigeria has the largest group of talent with 5000 new workers in the last year. Morocco added 3,000 new professionals, while South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, and Tunisia all added 2,000 each to their talent pool. However, South Africa has the largest number of software developers with 121,000 in total, followed by Nigeria and Egypt with 89,000 workers each. The total number of professional software developers in the African workforce is put at 716,000- which while impressive, represents only 0.4% of the non-agricultural workforce in Africa.
Meanwhile, the report adds also that compensation for these roles has also experienced a positive impact as a result of the demand for African talent. The report reads in part: “More African developers are getting full-time jobs due to both the rise in demand from local start-ups and the global demand for remote technical talent.” Still, while the average salaries of developers grew by 11%, junior developers saw theirs go down by 9%, owing to an abundance of junior developer talent coming out of these countries.