I guess the training’s down in Africa, CNCF & Andela skill-up 20,000+ IT pros

Full disclosure, I grew up in East Africa. A portion of my heart and soul will be forever tied to the dry earth, abundant fruit & fish, the golden beaches and the unwavering smiles of the local people who allowed my family to be expatriates for a few years.

In technology, if not in life, it feels like everything comes full circle. So it was particularly welcome to hear news from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as the sustainable ecosystems for cloud-native software organisation now works alongside the Linux Foundation to launch an IT skills training initiative in mother Africa.

The CNCF along with Linux Foundation Education, the training and certification arm of the Linux Foundation, has partnered with Andela, a tech talent marketplace, to train (a targeted number of) some 20,000 to 30,000 African technologists in cloud-native basics.

Global borderless workforces

The partnership will set out to upskill African tech talent on Kubernetes basics and extend wider commercial market-related and technology platform-centric opportunities as global borderless workforces grow.

The training is offered at no cost to the participants.

Initially conceived as a project that will begin next year (2025) and unfold over the next two to three years, participants will have the opportunity to train for the Kubernetes and Cloud Native associate (KCNA) certification, which demonstrates a user’s foundational knowledge and skills in Kubernetes and the wider cloud native ecosystem.

Participants can also train for the eCertified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD), which certifies that users can design, build, configure and expose cloud native applications for Kubernetes.

“This partnership showcases the global impact of CNCF’s education programmes. By standardising cloud native knowledge, developers across the globe can confidently work toward certifications that will enable them to land developer positions both within their own countries and globally,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO at the CNCF. “By partnering with Andela, which has a long history of training technologists in Africa, we see great opportunity in providing our training to communities that may otherwise not have access. Together we can create a win-win for companies that need workers and workers that need opportunities.”

According to Google’s Africa Developer Ecosystem Report 2021, the increased global demand for remote tech talent, which was accelerated by the pandemic, created more remote employment opportunities for African developers.

The training’s down in Africa

Now, 38% of African software developers work for at least one company based outside of the continent.

”We are excited to partner with CNCF to extend training and, ultimately, enhance job opportunities for African workers. The continent is emerging as one of the most important markets in the world. It has the fastest-growing population of developers, and its young workforce will be key to solving the tech talent shortage,” said Carrol Chang, Andela CEO. “Organisations are looking for talent with advanced skill sets like AI and cloud-native and this particular skill set is a perfect addition to the Andela marketplace.”

Training participants will take six to nine months to achieve the KCNA and CKAD certifications and will be selected from Andela’s talent marketplace, which includes 150,000 technology professionals globally.

Andela’s talent marketplace in Africa spans 49 of the continent’s countries; including Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. The company claims to foster “an active community” and has worked with numerous companies in the region including Google, Meta, Microsoft, AWS and Nvidia to train IT tech skills.

“As a non-profit focused on growing open source and cultivating the IT talent needed to sustain it, partnerships – like this one with Andela – help us train and certify under-represented groups, which is crucial to both our long-term success and amplify our impact,” said Clyde Seepersad, senior vice president and general manager of Linux Foundation Education.

A recent study by CNCF suggested that almost 55% of developers landed a new job as a result of training and certification courses. Almost 7 in 10 (67%) said it made them feel more engaged and fulfilled in their work. However, 8 in 10 (81%) also said cost prevented them from completing certifications.

But what makes the development community across the African continent so special and so well-placed to be able to start contributing at a global level? One man who knows is Ross O’Neill in his role as senior manager for learning at Andela. Speaking to O’Neill during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon American 2024 in Salt Lake City, the Computer Weekly Developer Network team got his view from ground zero.

“Africa is a ‘young’ continent in terms of its people, with the fastest growing population of developers – estimated to be over 700K according to Google’s Africa Developer Ecosystem Report 2021 and I am sure that number has grown in the past three years since that survey was conducted. Additionally, 38% of those developers work for at least one company outside of the continent,” said O’Neill.

O’Neill says that after speaking with the African developers in the marketplace, he feels that many have a desire to be certified in Kubernetes and other cloud-native technologies, but it has been cost prohibitive.

“On the other side of our marketplace, when our clients submit a job role, the desire for someone with Kubernetes skills are in 90% of those requests. So overall, the demand for Kubernetes is solid and strong, all of which means that we are thrilled with this news of the CNCF and Andela working together to provide KCNA and CKAD training and certification to 20K to 30K African developers, kicking off in 2025. This program will help meet the demand for more Kubernetes practitioners, help the developers in the learning program enhance their employability and expand the reach of the cloud native community,” said O’Neill.

A personal view

Speaking personally on this one rare occasion and having a couple of friends working in Nairobi and Lagos in the tech sector, this is heartening stuff to see. Back in the 1970s, we had no television and intermittent electricity and international phone calls back to the UK had to be placed via a human switchboard operator – a skill which my father performed admirably in a sort of Swahili-cum-English hybrid. To think that the continent now has the potential to match the rest of the world in technical skills and is growing so rapidly in this space is joyful.

Carrol Chang, Andela CEO.

Ross O’Neill, senior manager for learning at Andela.