African programmer here, and left the country I was born in decades ago to find somewhere that had a demand for my skills.
You'll find there's a direct correlation between available jobs for a career and people qualified or qualifying for that career that remain there. The only places in Sub-Saharan Africa that need programmers are of the scale where they have a regional head office elsewhere in the region (ie. South Africa, where they centralise support services like IT, development, analysis etc.)
Combined with the fact that the power houses of development in Africa are about as immigration friendly to other Africans as some of them would have been to people by virtue skin colour not so long ago. To clarify, "African from a poor African nation" is the new black in South Africa/Namibia/Botswana I can't speak for anywhere in Central or Northern Africa as I've not tried them.
One other point, probably unrelated, but definitely relevant to me:
Being a geek, it's hard to live somewhere where hardware, a dead hard drive for example, costs several months salary to replace. Especially when the environment (heat & frequent loss of power) is conducive to dying hardware :)
Hard drives are generally pretty cheap nowadays, so I'd think it would be more like 1-2 weeks of pay for a minimum wage earner, perhaps even 1-2 days pay for someone doing technical work. But even still, your point is valid.
Ok, this is anecdotal, but it paints a picture I'm familiar with in a sub-Saharan African country on the lower end of the development index.
A former colleague of mine, doing network hardware + infra installations presently earns $200-300 a month, and lives in a township. That's more than triple what we earned when I worked with him in the early 90s, here's his situation:
1/ After expenses he has not enough to buy even the cheapest hard-disk on the market, not when 100% duties on luxury goods (computers count as this) are imposed. So, yep, it's a project that warrants saving for.
2/ He can program in Perl, Bash, KSH and C, has a good understanding of Linux, FreeBSD + the extinct Unices (SCO, etc), the last I spoke to him he was learning several others. He has never held a job using any of those skills, and doesn't call him self a programmer.
3/ He has a computer, it's a laptop that was going to be trashed considered beyond repair that he repaired, and he leaves it at his workplace, because he can't afford to replace it and in the township theft is a certainty at some point. He arrives at work at 6am and, if he's anything like I remember, leaves at after 10pm, because that's where his computer is.
4/ He's given up trying to emigrate, because as long you intend to do things legally and you don't hold relevant university degrees, it's impossible. And none of us geeks that were in our lates teens/early twenties in that period do - there were no meaningful compsci courses. His only qualification is something to do with agriculture, which was the topic de jour of the era.
Why is his story relevant? Because he's the only one of the aforementioned Afican geeks of that generation still unlucky enough to be there. The rest of us all left. And if he had the correct degrees, or was lucky enough to have an opportunity, he too would be long gone.
You could go to a lot of the Compsci departments at many Universities in African countries and find a lot of good developers or potentially good devs. This is where Accenture , microsoft etc, get their devs from in Africa.
EDIT: PLZ downvote this post, my challenge to u guys is to make my Karma go to zero! You can do it guys.
True. However all of those are, as you point out, from either South Africa or Ghana. See my points regarding the power houses of Africa in the parent post.
Outside those, the comp-sci depts. in every uni I checked with were only teaching archaic languages, even by the standards of the day, or none at all. I'll concede, that in my case, that was long ago - but given I'm just hitting middle age, I believe it's still relevant, hence the tips I later gave.
TL'DR: if you're African, and not from either of those places or outright wealthy, good luck getting in. Ghana and RSA count, in most respects, as exceptions to the rule.
I'm not trying to say anything about race. But many of the examples you pointed out seemed to be of people of non-african descent. I don't think your examples say much about Africans in tech so much as it says something about people in positions of privilege having the opportunity to found companies.
I say this as a one-time white-foreigner living in South Africa, where I spent four years.
Having lived in South Africa, you will also know that South Africa houses an indigenous white population that has settled in the country ~ 400 years ago, roughly the same time that Europeans settled in America, and also the same time that the black tribes also migrated and arrived in South Africa (Zulu's, Xhosa's, Sotho's etc.)
But now for some reason "African" refers to only black people, and white Africans are priviledged and not worthy of mention. Would you follow that same logic for Americans?
*For technical correctness the Khoi-San settled in South Africa ~2000 years ago, but is a minority population in South Africa.
Thanks for this kabouseng. As a white South African whose ancestors arrived ~300 years ago, I was wondering how much longer before I was allowed to identify as "African".
I usually take accusations of reverse racism with a pinch of salt, but there was recently a discussion on Twitter where a popular ex-radio host (Kay Sexwale, @kaysexwale), stated that whites cannot be Africans, nor can they lead political parties in Africa. Ordinarily someone like that would be regarded as a kook, but she in the last week, almost got a job as Chief of Staff to the Premier of Gauteng province. Also her assertions were not really questioned by black Africans on Twitter, if I recall correctly (some whites were, rightfully, quite offended).
There is a strong degree of vigilance required. However, it should also be admitted that many white South Africans don't make much of an effort to integrate, or to be constructive, instead resorting to constant belittlement, obstructionism and moaning. This combination of white intransigence, and nascent black African supremacism doesn't bode well for the future.
If giving up control over your country of birth without any form of violence doesn't show the most absolute effort to integrate, then I don't know what measures will convince you otherwise?
Here is the thing. For whatever reasons, right or wrong, most people understand 'African' to mean 'black'. Sucks. Egypt is not populated by black people, and people think of that as part of middle-east.
Most people are only consciously politically correct.
For what it's worth, the original title was asking where all the African developers are, and the top threads all so far talk about South Africa.
We're particularly myopic in the Northern Hemisphere when it comes to Africa, often seeing the Mediterranean coast and South Africa and skipping that middle part...
So while it truly is interesting to hear that there's a solid development community in South Africa, it doesn't speak to the larger question on why we see so little coming from the rest of the continent.
I can't really speak for anything north of the equator, but I have travelled fairly extensively in the southern half of Africa.
The impression I get as a visitor to many of these countries is that except for a few big cities it is just too difficult to guarantee power and telecoms access to bet your job on it.
Most people will find a job locally doing "boring" software since there is less risk. Working remotely for a company in the US/Europe requires them to understand your (african) problems which is always difficult.
If I am at the office and we have no power, my boss understands; If I am remote-working, will my "American/European" boss understand why I just lost a day?
The advantage of staying here (in SA) means that even if you are doing boring software, your salary is probably good enough to give you spectacular buying power compared to 99% of the planet.
As you move to more remote places, the salaries just keep increasing. I was recently looking at a job in Tete (Northern Mozambique) which paid around USD450k p.a.
So, I guess that doesn't really answer your question, but I think Africa is quiet mostly because the "boring" jobs pay disproportionately well --- the incentive to be an entrepreneur is mostly gone. (I say this as someone working at a startup of sorts)
I'm extremely interested in working somewhere remote/strange in Africa/other underdeveloped areas of the world (not even looking for anything notably well paying). I've tried a couple of times to search for relevant job boards and the like but haven't been able to find anything halfway decent. If you could go into a bit more detail about where one would look for that sort of thing/what the typical process is in that part of the world or shoot me an email at public at disastero.us, I would be tremendously grateful.
Thanks!
Edit: The bigger the shithole the better, really. I've been trying to find a method for searching for jobs in adverse environments for a while, but haven't been in any way successful.
So if you want to move somewhere off the beaten track your job choices are going to be:
1) Mining
2) Power/Electricity
3) Support for the above.
Most companies don't hire in the countries they operate in, since the skills just don't exist. Most sites are populated by a mix of European/South African/Indian expats who are there for a limited period (typically < 5 years)
The way to get into these types of jobs is to get hired by the European or South African companies that operate in these areas, and then ask for placement at your shithole of choice. The current rule of thumb is to ask for your SA salary * 4 or * 5 depending on how bad the place actually is.
At the moment there is is a lot of activity in Northen Zambia (copper) with companies like Yokogawa/Siemens/ABB looking for people.
Northern Mozambique is pretty active (coal/gas) with Vale/Jindal being the major mining houses and ABB/Siemens etc. providing the tech.
On the power generation side - South Africa has quite a lot of activity on the renewable side with Spanish and Danish companies taking the lead (Abengoa for solar esp.)
There is currently also a bit of a power generation boom in Ghana and Benin, but I don't know anyone directly involved.
Most of the work is in hardware, project management, or process control though. It is going to be much harder to find software only work.
EDIT: I forgot to mention - there might be more opportunity for software only work in banking. I know Barclays is currently busy with a big push up into Africa, but I am not very familiar with that industry.
- If you live in a western country, try to get a remote job. Spend a few months in your remote position and see how you like it. If you like it, you can talk to your manager and ask if moving to wherever you like is feasible. Make sure you get good enough internet when you go, and learn enough about batteries and inverters to buy a power supply system (solar 12V batteries and a chinese power inverter will set you back 200USD and last for a good year at least).
- Send you resume to NGOs. Forget the startup crowd for a bit. Most people applying to NGOs are people with social/education/medical backgrounds, and IT skills are in very high demand, because nobody with IT skills ever applies to be sent to a remote place. I'm pretty sure almost any NGO will hire you if you can teach IT-related topics (programming, networks, systems...). Pay isn't great in general, but the experience makes up for it (also, the countries you'll visit are, by definition, not expensive to live in).
If you need contacts, I can give you some in Tanzania and Senegal even if my network here is a little more limited (finding my contact info is left as an exercise to the reader).
I used to work in the UK for a company founded by Mo Ibrahim[1]. I got to travel to SA a few times and to Tanzania as well as Egypt and various middle eastern countries, as well as Europe and further afield. Part of that company still exists under a different name[2]. There aren't a lot of jobs in telecoms in Africa, but the ones that do exist are interesting and will get you around a lot.
I work with a really great Nigerian programmer, if that helps, and one of our project managers is from Mauritius. My boss (CIO) was born in Tanzania, but is of Indian descent. I previously hired a South African coder.
The one thing all those people have in common: every one of them left Africa for better opportunities elsewhere (US, France, Brazil).
I work with a really great Nigerian programmer, if that helps, and one of our project managers is from Mauritius. My boss (CIO) was born in Tanzania, but is of Indian descent.
Not OP. The difference between the American and South African situations is that no one thinks there's a good chance of the majority non-white population expelling the white population of America or making life so unpleasant all that stays is a tiny merchant minority.
If South Africa does not do that it will be yhe first African country not to do so. Kill the Boer, Kill the Boer and all that.
Also, if this does happen the white South Africans should expect all the sympathy and aid the white Zimbabweans who didn't leave got, none. If you do not fit the narrative sorry, should have packed for Perth.
Lets not forget that this narrative was forced upon white South African's by the liberal west through sanctions and boicots. So if there is a genocide, it will fall squarely on the west's conscience.
Lets also not forget that the reason why America and Australia does not have majority non-white populations is because they exterminated their native populations. An inconvenient fact (google general Custer and aboriginea hunting permits).
And yet most white people in South Africa only have a South African passport and are not citizens of any other country. How does that not make them African?
Have you looked back 300 to 400 yrs of South Africa's history before labeling all these people not African? If this is true, then American whites are not American. You can be white and be African.
You are being racist. People born and bred in Africa are of African descent. Skin color is irrelevant and to think that skin color makes a difference to how "african" you are, makes you racist.
OffTopic - J. R. R. Tolkien - South African, Lord of the Rings
Born from British parents living in the Boer province of South-Africa, a British colony, so not really South-Africa per se. And he returned to the UK eventually for and after WW1.
"The Orange Free State (Dutch: Oranje-Vrijstaat Afrikaans: Oranje-Vrystaat) was an independent Boer sovereign republic in southern Africa"
This was Recognized by who? Only crazy Boers, South Africa was there before that. History books after apartheid have been re-written exactly for this reason, the apartheid regime told an apartheid version. Go and look at the differences, i have studied the history. Take your feet, visit the place, talk to the people, understand the history, don't be a "Wikipedia keyboard warrior"!
What amazes me is that you so confidently post that quote without realizing how terrible your understanding of it is.
This shows utter ignorance, go visit the place and understand the history. I kind of want to go on a long explanation, but its just not worth it, people will remain ignorant until they choose to educate themselves of the facts.
ps. If the Mayflower ship brings British settlers to the U.S. and they have a kid in the U.S, is that kid not American? A boer colony is just a place where early Dutch settlers settled in South Africa, just like those people arriving in the U.S. on the Mayflower.
ps. If the Mayflower ship brings British settlers to the U.S. and they have a kid in the U.S, is that kid not American?
Irrelevant example. South Africa was a British colony during Tolkien's youth, and I have never heard him being refered as a "South African" - he is born from British parents who happened to live in South Africa for a while, and is clearly identified as a British writer everywhere I know. It's extremely strange to call him "South African" and I do not know where you even got this notion. Even Tolkien refered himself as being English in terms of ethnicity. Check his writings before calling people ignorant.
The Orange Free State (Dutch: Oranje-Vrijstaat Afrikaans: Oranje-Vrystaat) was an independent Boer sovereign republic in southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, and later a British colony and a province of the Union of South Africa.
EDIT: I noticed you changed your first message without any "EDIT" notice after I posted this answer. This is not very well viewed on HN.
South Africa is one of the three richest countries in Africa (with Egypt and Morocco). There's a lot of Africa between those three corners. From your list, only Herman Chinery-Hesse is not from South Africa.
There's a lot of untapped potential in Africa that's practically invisible.
Our company is going to hire an intern from South Africa soon, I'm going to be involved deciding which applicant we accept.
"You'll find there's a direct correlation between available jobs for a career and people qualified or qualifying for that career that remain there."
It was for this reason I told my bosses it might be hard to find someone good, but they told me we're going to do it anyway, to see for ourselves, since the company plans to open an office there next year.
Do you have any advice on how to find and attract good programmers in Africa?
1/ Make your job student friendly and don't look for the usual 5+ years of experience
2/ Keep firmly in mind that the best trait in a programmer isn't necessarily qualification, but the ability to learn fast, and problem solve quickly and effectively.
3/ When multiple candidates fit the profile (above) but you're unsure, either give a final interview round with more extensive tests to clarify their abilities in those two areas. Or else hire all of them on trial basis. Make clear that at the end only one gets a job, but the other two get some paid temporary work and a really glowing letter of recommendation. It's win win, 1 gets a job, the others get invaluable work experience that's in short supply.
If I had those opportunities, I might be somewhere with a far better climate and a much cheaper and stress free life style :)
Edit: I just noticed you said South Africa and not Southern Africa. I don't think you'll have any trouble finding qualified programmers.
2/ Keep firmly in mind that the best trait in a programmer isn't necessarily qualification, but the ability to learn fast, and problem solve quickly and effectively.
This is so true. In fact, it is worth underlining that this probably holds worldwide, not just for Africa. Given the choice between someone with the qualifications but without those traits and someone that is not qualified but eager to learn and has a good ability to solve problems (even if they are non-programming problems) I'd most likely hire the latter.
I love your 'glowing letter of recommendation' idea, there is a small downside to that though, which is that your letter will set expectations rather high when the person that you let go will apply somewhere else and that will lead to those recommendations being less valuable than if they are honest. Feel free to highlight the good sides of the person and simply to omit the downsides (so they can work on improving those without having them committed to a piece of paper). In my experience those are the best, they help to guide and inform rather than that they raise expectations to the unrealistic.
If I had those opportunities, I might be somewhere with a far better climate and a much cheaper and stress free life style :)
There is an opportunity right here now, once every month, the 'who wants to be hired' thread. I encourage you to post there when it rolls around next month, who knows what you'll land.
I love your 'glowing letter of recommendation' idea,
there is a small downside to that though, which is that
your letter will set expectations rather high
True, honesty is certainly a must, I should have stated that by glowing I meant only a cut above the usual dry business tone of such things. In my experience the letter of recommendation, like the rest of a CV, just gets your foot in the door - after that it's down to you to shine. But for an inexperienced candidate, getting a foot in the door is a big thing. I got my first real job in Europe purely based on a recruiter who got me telling my manager-to-be "you have to meet this crazy African kid, he has no qualifications but has hacked every device he's laid hands on since age 8, and set up an ISP" or words to that effect, with an endorsement like that, I was bound to get at least a trial.
There is an opportunity right here now, once every
month, the 'who wants to be hired' thread. I encourage
you to post there when it rolls around next month, who
knows what you'll land.
Thanks for that! Monitoring the thread, more out of curiosity than anything else, I suspect I'm probably no longer ideal for that sort of thing. As I think we've discussed before (you've seen my CV, we met at another HNer's wedding, and chatted by email a number of times) I've since changed the focus of my career, and working for any sort of large company and probably within any sort of formal structure really isn't on the books for me. I did that for far too long, and got far too jaded by the experience to approach it any sort of good attitude. These days I prefer to tinker and hack all things as interest takes me. I've spent the last year writing + renovating & automating a house beyond reason, I think next I want to try a boat of some kind :)
South Africa is an interesting mix of 1st and 3rd world in almost every aspect of life. Education can be world class, yet many are illiterate. Medicine can be world class (the first ever successful heart transplant anywhere in the world, was carried out by a South African doctor in a South African hospital), yet HIV, tuberculosis, and other treatable/manageable diseases run riot in some areas.
IT professional from SA are likely to be world class (Mark Shuttleworth and Elon Musk for example, are South African) and in general IT and related skills are rather advanced in SA and very much first world.
I am a software developer in South Africa (Embedded). What skillset are you looking for?
Searching for a suitable candidate in South Africa follows exactly the same process as everywhere else in the world. If you want experienced candidates, use the headhunters or post the job on job boards. For interns the best approach is through the universities or schools.
Finding someone good in South Africa is the same as everywhere else, good developers are in high demand.
We're going to be hiring an intern for web development via aiesec (https://www.aiesec.org/#/news), I'm going to try look for someone who's good with linux, can write python, and strives to write excellent code. Going to bring them to our Sydney office. If it works out well when we start an office in South Africa we'll hire developers there too.
South African here. You'll easily find good people. Our startup culture is so-so and if you want esoteric languages you'll have to look harder, but .net, Java, Ruby, mobile, Linux etc should be fine. For interns just contact a local uni in the city you're like to be in (probably Johannesburg or Cape Town).
Comments
African programmer here, and left the country I was born in decades ago to find somewhere that had a demand for my skills.
You'll find there's a direct correlation between available jobs for a career and people qualified or qualifying for that career that remain there. The only places in Sub-Saharan Africa that need programmers are of the scale where they have a regional head office elsewhere in the region (ie. South Africa, where they centralise support services like IT, development, analysis etc.)
Combined with the fact that the power houses of development in Africa are about as immigration friendly to other Africans as some of them would have been to people by virtue skin colour not so long ago. To clarify, "African from a poor African nation" is the new black in South Africa/Namibia/Botswana I can't speak for anywhere in Central or Northern Africa as I've not tried them.
One other point, probably unrelated, but definitely relevant to me:
Being a geek, it's hard to live somewhere where hardware, a dead hard drive for example, costs several months salary to replace. Especially when the environment (heat & frequent loss of power) is conducive to dying hardware :)
Hard drives are generally pretty cheap nowadays, so I'd think it would be more like 1-2 weeks of pay for a minimum wage earner, perhaps even 1-2 days pay for someone doing technical work. But even still, your point is valid.
Ok, this is anecdotal, but it paints a picture I'm familiar with in a sub-Saharan African country on the lower end of the development index.
A former colleague of mine, doing network hardware + infra installations presently earns $200-300 a month, and lives in a township. That's more than triple what we earned when I worked with him in the early 90s, here's his situation:
1/ After expenses he has not enough to buy even the cheapest hard-disk on the market, not when 100% duties on luxury goods (computers count as this) are imposed. So, yep, it's a project that warrants saving for.
2/ He can program in Perl, Bash, KSH and C, has a good understanding of Linux, FreeBSD + the extinct Unices (SCO, etc), the last I spoke to him he was learning several others. He has never held a job using any of those skills, and doesn't call him self a programmer.
3/ He has a computer, it's a laptop that was going to be trashed considered beyond repair that he repaired, and he leaves it at his workplace, because he can't afford to replace it and in the township theft is a certainty at some point. He arrives at work at 6am and, if he's anything like I remember, leaves at after 10pm, because that's where his computer is.
4/ He's given up trying to emigrate, because as long you intend to do things legally and you don't hold relevant university degrees, it's impossible. And none of us geeks that were in our lates teens/early twenties in that period do - there were no meaningful compsci courses. His only qualification is something to do with agriculture, which was the topic de jour of the era.
Why is his story relevant? Because he's the only one of the aforementioned Afican geeks of that generation still unlucky enough to be there. The rest of us all left. And if he had the correct degrees, or was lucky enough to have an opportunity, he too would be long gone.
Mark Shuttleworth - Ubuntu Creator South African & sold Thawte to Verisign in the dotcom boom.
Elon Musk - South African, of paypal & spacex
Roelof Botha - South African, of paypal & Sequoia
Emanuel Derman - South African, of Goldman Sachs Quantitative strategies
Amazon Web Services - South Africa
Herman Chinery-Hesse - Ghana, of SOFTtribe
OffTopic - J. R. R. Tolkien - South African, Lord of the Rings
There is a lot more where that came from: http://ventureburn.com/2014/03/20-kickass-african-tech-entre...
You could go to a lot of the Compsci departments at many Universities in African countries and find a lot of good developers or potentially good devs. This is where Accenture , microsoft etc, get their devs from in Africa.
EDIT: PLZ downvote this post, my challenge to u guys is to make my Karma go to zero! You can do it guys.
True. However all of those are, as you point out, from either South Africa or Ghana. See my points regarding the power houses of Africa in the parent post.
Outside those, the comp-sci depts. in every uni I checked with were only teaching archaic languages, even by the standards of the day, or none at all. I'll concede, that in my case, that was long ago - but given I'm just hitting middle age, I believe it's still relevant, hence the tips I later gave.
TL'DR: if you're African, and not from either of those places or outright wealthy, good luck getting in. Ghana and RSA count, in most respects, as exceptions to the rule.
Just seen the full list, and there're a fair few from other countries - but given the relatively tiny number of names involved, I stand by my opinions
Mark Shuttleworth: white, British descent,
Elon Musk: white, Canadian/British descent,
Chris Pinkham and Benjamin Black (AWS): white,
Emanuel Derman: white,
J. R. R. Tolkien: white, British descent.
---
I'm not trying to say anything about race. But many of the examples you pointed out seemed to be of people of non-african descent. I don't think your examples say much about Africans in tech so much as it says something about people in positions of privilege having the opportunity to found companies.
I say this as a one-time white-foreigner living in South Africa, where I spent four years.
Having lived in South Africa, you will also know that South Africa houses an indigenous white population that has settled in the country ~ 400 years ago, roughly the same time that Europeans settled in America, and also the same time that the black tribes also migrated and arrived in South Africa (Zulu's, Xhosa's, Sotho's etc.)
But now for some reason "African" refers to only black people, and white Africans are priviledged and not worthy of mention. Would you follow that same logic for Americans?
*For technical correctness the Khoi-San settled in South Africa ~2000 years ago, but is a minority population in South Africa.
Thanks for this kabouseng. As a white South African whose ancestors arrived ~300 years ago, I was wondering how much longer before I was allowed to identify as "African".
It's not like I have anywhere else to call home.
People are reluctant to recognize the racism against white people. Maybe it will change with the time.
I'm a white South African Software Engineer, too. Family arrived here +- 200 years ago.
If that doesn't make me African, what does? I can promise you that if I go to Europe, I won't be considered European!
I usually take accusations of reverse racism with a pinch of salt, but there was recently a discussion on Twitter where a popular ex-radio host (Kay Sexwale, @kaysexwale), stated that whites cannot be Africans, nor can they lead political parties in Africa. Ordinarily someone like that would be regarded as a kook, but she in the last week, almost got a job as Chief of Staff to the Premier of Gauteng province. Also her assertions were not really questioned by black Africans on Twitter, if I recall correctly (some whites were, rightfully, quite offended).
There is a strong degree of vigilance required. However, it should also be admitted that many white South Africans don't make much of an effort to integrate, or to be constructive, instead resorting to constant belittlement, obstructionism and moaning. This combination of white intransigence, and nascent black African supremacism doesn't bode well for the future.
If giving up control over your country of birth without any form of violence doesn't show the most absolute effort to integrate, then I don't know what measures will convince you otherwise?
Here is the thing. For whatever reasons, right or wrong, most people understand 'African' to mean 'black'. Sucks. Egypt is not populated by black people, and people think of that as part of middle-east.
Most people are only consciously politically correct.
For what it's worth, the original title was asking where all the African developers are, and the top threads all so far talk about South Africa.
We're particularly myopic in the Northern Hemisphere when it comes to Africa, often seeing the Mediterranean coast and South Africa and skipping that middle part...
So while it truly is interesting to hear that there's a solid development community in South Africa, it doesn't speak to the larger question on why we see so little coming from the rest of the continent.
I can't really speak for anything north of the equator, but I have travelled fairly extensively in the southern half of Africa.
The impression I get as a visitor to many of these countries is that except for a few big cities it is just too difficult to guarantee power and telecoms access to bet your job on it.
Most people will find a job locally doing "boring" software since there is less risk. Working remotely for a company in the US/Europe requires them to understand your (african) problems which is always difficult.
If I am at the office and we have no power, my boss understands; If I am remote-working, will my "American/European" boss understand why I just lost a day?
The advantage of staying here (in SA) means that even if you are doing boring software, your salary is probably good enough to give you spectacular buying power compared to 99% of the planet.
As you move to more remote places, the salaries just keep increasing. I was recently looking at a job in Tete (Northern Mozambique) which paid around USD450k p.a.
So, I guess that doesn't really answer your question, but I think Africa is quiet mostly because the "boring" jobs pay disproportionately well --- the incentive to be an entrepreneur is mostly gone. (I say this as someone working at a startup of sorts)
I'm extremely interested in working somewhere remote/strange in Africa/other underdeveloped areas of the world (not even looking for anything notably well paying). I've tried a couple of times to search for relevant job boards and the like but haven't been able to find anything halfway decent. If you could go into a bit more detail about where one would look for that sort of thing/what the typical process is in that part of the world or shoot me an email at public at disastero.us, I would be tremendously grateful.
Thanks!
Edit: The bigger the shithole the better, really. I've been trying to find a method for searching for jobs in adverse environments for a while, but haven't been in any way successful.
So if you want to move somewhere off the beaten track your job choices are going to be:
1) Mining 2) Power/Electricity 3) Support for the above.
Most companies don't hire in the countries they operate in, since the skills just don't exist. Most sites are populated by a mix of European/South African/Indian expats who are there for a limited period (typically < 5 years)
The way to get into these types of jobs is to get hired by the European or South African companies that operate in these areas, and then ask for placement at your shithole of choice. The current rule of thumb is to ask for your SA salary * 4 or * 5 depending on how bad the place actually is.
At the moment there is is a lot of activity in Northen Zambia (copper) with companies like Yokogawa/Siemens/ABB looking for people.
Northern Mozambique is pretty active (coal/gas) with Vale/Jindal being the major mining houses and ABB/Siemens etc. providing the tech.
On the power generation side - South Africa has quite a lot of activity on the renewable side with Spanish and Danish companies taking the lead (Abengoa for solar esp.)
There is currently also a bit of a power generation boom in Ghana and Benin, but I don't know anyone directly involved.
Most of the work is in hardware, project management, or process control though. It is going to be much harder to find software only work.
EDIT: I forgot to mention - there might be more opportunity for software only work in banking. I know Barclays is currently busy with a big push up into Africa, but I am not very familiar with that industry.
A few notes/tips:
- If you live in a western country, try to get a remote job. Spend a few months in your remote position and see how you like it. If you like it, you can talk to your manager and ask if moving to wherever you like is feasible. Make sure you get good enough internet when you go, and learn enough about batteries and inverters to buy a power supply system (solar 12V batteries and a chinese power inverter will set you back 200USD and last for a good year at least).
- Send you resume to NGOs. Forget the startup crowd for a bit. Most people applying to NGOs are people with social/education/medical backgrounds, and IT skills are in very high demand, because nobody with IT skills ever applies to be sent to a remote place. I'm pretty sure almost any NGO will hire you if you can teach IT-related topics (programming, networks, systems...). Pay isn't great in general, but the experience makes up for it (also, the countries you'll visit are, by definition, not expensive to live in).
If you need contacts, I can give you some in Tanzania and Senegal even if my network here is a little more limited (finding my contact info is left as an exercise to the reader).
I used to work in the UK for a company founded by Mo Ibrahim[1]. I got to travel to SA a few times and to Tanzania as well as Egypt and various middle eastern countries, as well as Europe and further afield. Part of that company still exists under a different name[2]. There aren't a lot of jobs in telecoms in Africa, but the ones that do exist are interesting and will get you around a lot.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Ibrahim [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtel
I concur - setting up a power backup system was my first task when moving here (Tanzania), and it isn't a simple nor cheap barrier to overcome.
That is a pretty impressive salary, even for western standards! Maybe I should consider moving to Mozambique :)
Tete is a shithole though --- maybe if I was young and single, but definitely not a place to raise a family.
I work with a really great Nigerian programmer, if that helps, and one of our project managers is from Mauritius. My boss (CIO) was born in Tanzania, but is of Indian descent. I previously hired a South African coder.
The one thing all those people have in common: every one of them left Africa for better opportunities elsewhere (US, France, Brazil).
I work with a really great Nigerian programmer, if that helps, and one of our project managers is from Mauritius. My boss (CIO) was born in Tanzania, but is of Indian descent.
Not OP. The difference between the American and South African situations is that no one thinks there's a good chance of the majority non-white population expelling the white population of America or making life so unpleasant all that stays is a tiny merchant minority.
If South Africa does not do that it will be yhe first African country not to do so. Kill the Boer, Kill the Boer and all that.
Also, if this does happen the white South Africans should expect all the sympathy and aid the white Zimbabweans who didn't leave got, none. If you do not fit the narrative sorry, should have packed for Perth.
Lets not forget that this narrative was forced upon white South African's by the liberal west through sanctions and boicots. So if there is a genocide, it will fall squarely on the west's conscience.
Lets also not forget that the reason why America and Australia does not have majority non-white populations is because they exterminated their native populations. An inconvenient fact (google general Custer and aboriginea hunting permits).
Edit - spelling
And yet most white people in South Africa only have a South African passport and are not citizens of any other country. How does that not make them African?
Have you looked back 300 to 400 yrs of South Africa's history before labeling all these people not African? If this is true, then American whites are not American. You can be white and be African.
You are being racist. People born and bred in Africa are of African descent. Skin color is irrelevant and to think that skin color makes a difference to how "african" you are, makes you racist.
Born from British parents living in the Boer province of South-Africa, a British colony, so not really South-Africa per se. And he returned to the UK eventually for and after WW1.
"The Orange Free State (Dutch: Oranje-Vrijstaat Afrikaans: Oranje-Vrystaat) was an independent Boer sovereign republic in southern Africa"
This was Recognized by who? Only crazy Boers, South Africa was there before that. History books after apartheid have been re-written exactly for this reason, the apartheid regime told an apartheid version. Go and look at the differences, i have studied the history. Take your feet, visit the place, talk to the people, understand the history, don't be a "Wikipedia keyboard warrior"!
Feel free to modify Wikipedia and cite your sources then, if it's all fantasy.
The point is that JRR Tolkien was an Englishman, not a South African—even though he was born in SA.
What amazes me is that you so confidently post that quote without realizing how terrible your understanding of it is. This shows utter ignorance, go visit the place and understand the history. I kind of want to go on a long explanation, but its just not worth it, people will remain ignorant until they choose to educate themselves of the facts.
ps. If the Mayflower ship brings British settlers to the U.S. and they have a kid in the U.S, is that kid not American? A boer colony is just a place where early Dutch settlers settled in South Africa, just like those people arriving in the U.S. on the Mayflower.
Irrelevant example. South Africa was a British colony during Tolkien's youth, and I have never heard him being refered as a "South African" - he is born from British parents who happened to live in South Africa for a while, and is clearly identified as a British writer everywhere I know. It's extremely strange to call him "South African" and I do not know where you even got this notion. Even Tolkien refered himself as being English in terms of ethnicity. Check his writings before calling people ignorant.
Believe what you want.
EDIT: I noticed you changed your first message without any "EDIT" notice after I posted this answer. This is not very well viewed on HN.
Adding a name to the list Theo de Raadt from OpenBSD and OpenSSH is also from euro african descent.
South Africa is one of the three richest countries in Africa (with Egypt and Morocco). There's a lot of Africa between those three corners. From your list, only Herman Chinery-Hesse is not from South Africa.
There's a lot of untapped potential in Africa that's practically invisible.
Our company is going to hire an intern from South Africa soon, I'm going to be involved deciding which applicant we accept.
"You'll find there's a direct correlation between available jobs for a career and people qualified or qualifying for that career that remain there."
It was for this reason I told my bosses it might be hard to find someone good, but they told me we're going to do it anyway, to see for ourselves, since the company plans to open an office there next year.
Do you have any advice on how to find and attract good programmers in Africa?
Sure, three tips:
1/ Make your job student friendly and don't look for the usual 5+ years of experience
2/ Keep firmly in mind that the best trait in a programmer isn't necessarily qualification, but the ability to learn fast, and problem solve quickly and effectively.
3/ When multiple candidates fit the profile (above) but you're unsure, either give a final interview round with more extensive tests to clarify their abilities in those two areas. Or else hire all of them on trial basis. Make clear that at the end only one gets a job, but the other two get some paid temporary work and a really glowing letter of recommendation. It's win win, 1 gets a job, the others get invaluable work experience that's in short supply.
If I had those opportunities, I might be somewhere with a far better climate and a much cheaper and stress free life style :)
Edit: I just noticed you said South Africa and not Southern Africa. I don't think you'll have any trouble finding qualified programmers.
This is so true. In fact, it is worth underlining that this probably holds worldwide, not just for Africa. Given the choice between someone with the qualifications but without those traits and someone that is not qualified but eager to learn and has a good ability to solve problems (even if they are non-programming problems) I'd most likely hire the latter.
I love your 'glowing letter of recommendation' idea, there is a small downside to that though, which is that your letter will set expectations rather high when the person that you let go will apply somewhere else and that will lead to those recommendations being less valuable than if they are honest. Feel free to highlight the good sides of the person and simply to omit the downsides (so they can work on improving those without having them committed to a piece of paper). In my experience those are the best, they help to guide and inform rather than that they raise expectations to the unrealistic.
There is an opportunity right here now, once every month, the 'who wants to be hired' thread. I encourage you to post there when it rolls around next month, who knows what you'll land.
Haha, that's you :) I did not realize this was your HN handle, super nice. Great to be in touch with you again.
I don't think I've come across any such post before. Perhaps they get pushed off the home page before I come around to check HN?
Any way to create a sticky of such posts like in a public GitHub repo where one can browse the links for the current month?
Let me find it for you, one second.
edit: here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7833250
Monitor the account that posted that thread around the beginning of July and you won't miss it.
South Africa is an interesting mix of 1st and 3rd world in almost every aspect of life. Education can be world class, yet many are illiterate. Medicine can be world class (the first ever successful heart transplant anywhere in the world, was carried out by a South African doctor in a South African hospital), yet HIV, tuberculosis, and other treatable/manageable diseases run riot in some areas.
IT professional from SA are likely to be world class (Mark Shuttleworth and Elon Musk for example, are South African) and in general IT and related skills are rather advanced in SA and very much first world.
Eric,
I am a software developer in South Africa (Embedded). What skillset are you looking for?
Searching for a suitable candidate in South Africa follows exactly the same process as everywhere else in the world. If you want experienced candidates, use the headhunters or post the job on job boards. For interns the best approach is through the universities or schools.
Finding someone good in South Africa is the same as everywhere else, good developers are in high demand.
Regards.
We're going to be hiring an intern for web development via aiesec (https://www.aiesec.org/#/news), I'm going to try look for someone who's good with linux, can write python, and strives to write excellent code. Going to bring them to our Sydney office. If it works out well when we start an office in South Africa we'll hire developers there too.
Eric, I can put you in touch with a couple of the local headhunters. They should be able to help you. Drop me an email if your interested.
kabousvlieg at gmail
South African here. You'll easily find good people. Our startup culture is so-so and if you want esoteric languages you'll have to look harder, but .net, Java, Ruby, mobile, Linux etc should be fine. For interns just contact a local uni in the city you're like to be in (probably Johannesburg or Cape Town).