Andela – a Thursday Software Training Institute formally introduced ‘ The Power of X campaign to hire junior, mid-level and senior software technicians.
According to the organizers, the theme of the case is Andela’s mission to address the worldwide technical talent shortage by constructing distributed engineering teams with top software developers in .
Andela has recruited 1,000 developers out of more than 140,000 candidates in five years, with tech campuses in Lagos, Nairobi, Kampala and Kigali.
The event brought together numerous stakeholders within the Rwandan and African Technology Ecosystems to share thoughts on how to create powerful careers for the software engineering field’s viable future in Rwanda.
The event’s objective is to provide an overview of the multiple long- term job opportunities and the expertise needed to start research in software engineering and advancement in that profession.
During the case, respondents discussed and addressed the needed adjustments to be made to strengthen the sector and make it more competitive at an global level.
Several speakers interacted with attendees during the case. They included Claudette Irere, Permanent Secretary, ICT and Innovation Ministry, Faith Keza, Irembo’s Managing Director ; Clement Uwajeneza, Andela Kigali’s Country Director, and Nifemi Bello, CcHub’s Senior Product Manager.
Others included Vanessa Umutoni from Girls In ICT, Clarisse Iribagiza, CEO of DMM Hehe and Norbert Kwizera, Software Engineer, Nyaruka.
Other senior software engineers from Andela Kigali, Nairobi and Lagos and students from Rwanda University, Africa Leardership University (ALU), Akilah Institute for Women, AAdventist University of Central Africa (AUCA), Carnegie Melon UUniveristy and Kepler attended the event.
Experts at the case raised concerns that despite this investment and current untapped work prospects, females in the sector required qualified staff and low rates of management.
Claudette Irere, Permanent Secretary (PS) at the Ministry of Information, Communication Technology and Innovation, said that due to a absence of general digital literacy and a clear technology career guidance path, which has led to a partial shortage of software developers and technicians and fewer females joining this sector.
“This, you can compare to building a highway and just talking walking through it. So we don’t have people creating content, don’t have the systems and the critical mass is not there,” Irere said.
PS Irere, who is a former coder and software engineer turned politician, was speaking at the first Andela Rwanda technology experts’ fire-side meeting in Kigali this August 1, 2019 dubbed “Building software engineering to suit particular local needs”.
The meeting was directed at exchanging thoughts on how to create powerful careers for a sustainable future of software engineering in Rwanda and discussing the needed modifications to strengthen and make Rwandans competitive worldwide.
Although the precise number of software engineers is not known, it is thought that there are presently about 200 software engineers, of whom Andela alone has over 80 technicians (with less than 10 percent being females) and only one senior engineer in the country-Gilbert Nzuwera.
This shortage is coupled with a low digital literacy of 8.9 percent of the 12 million citizens who have grown at a low rate of one percent each year over the past five years.
To reverse this, Irere said that Rwanda has come up with a pyramid of needs evaluation, at the bottom of which are five million people who can be educated in fundamental digital literacy by “digital ambassadors,” who are high school graduates with fundamental abilities.
However, according to Irere, this situation of absence of qualified software engineers will be overturned with the developed Rwanda Coding Academy that was opened last year and the first class to graduate two years from now.
“The academy has a very intentional curriculum that is not a usual one. It looked at three things software engineering embedded systems and cybersecurity- which we thing can address the current needs and its being revised to add to more soft skills,” Irere said.
In addition to few amounts of software skills, the conference also raised concerns about fewer females in the coding and software engineering domain, despite Rwanda being an acclaimed nation in supporting gender equality and absence of career guidance in engineering.
For instance, Vanessa Umutoni, a software developer at Pivot Rwanda, claims she joined the coding and software engineering out of exposure and chance, but this is not the same for most women in Rwanda.
“There is an issue of culture and mindset that needs to be solved to orient girls in software engineering as a career at a young age, and that is how we shall get more women involved if they get oriented early,” Umutoni said.
Other women engineers also said that in order to increase women in this field, young girls should be taught soft skills such as public speaking, which will enable their mentality to think big, stand out and imagine themselves in the male software career. Clément Uwajeneza, Andela Rwanda Country Director said the firm is planning to raise the number of females with a particular recruitment of all females in the near future to tackle this gender gap.
“We as Rwandans have an inclination to being leaders in policy and there is nothing that is going to prevent us from increasing gender equality among software engineers. This is one thing we have agreed on,” Uwajeneza said.
He also added that there are plans to continue holding comparable meetings commonly with a more concentrated topic and input from a wider audience in the nation.
