Andela, Google, Pluralsight launch Africa wide program to benefit 30,000 software engineers

Andela, Google and Pluralsight recently launched the third edition of a developer skills program aimed at equipping participants for entry level and intermediate skills in Android, Google Cloud, and Mobile Web technologies. The program known as the Google Africa Developer Scholarship is now open to all countries in Africa and offers 30,000 scholarships and 1,000 grants opportunities for the Google Associate Android Developer and Associate Cloud Engineer certifications.

The thousands of participants targeted by this program will get free access to learning content on Pluralsight, which offers a wide range of video training courses for professionals in the software engineering industry through its website, where interested applicants can apply.

Peer to peer learning, a main feature in the program will be run by Andela, through the Andela Learning Community which will offer learning support through the duration of the program.

“Usually, we use an interactive program approach that allows for the success of individuals who join. We do this by pairing the learners with mentors who support them throughout the program, holding online sessions such as ‘Calls with Experts’ and through physical meet-ups,” said Lina Ng'inja, the Talent Partnerships Manager at Andela. “This year’s program will be 100% online with more webinars, happy hours, networking sessions, mentorship and networking with developers across the continent.”

The program now in its third round has so far supported over 60,000 aspiring and experienced developers across Africa. In 2019 alone, 33,000 learners were shortlisted to take part of whom 15,000 successfully completed the training.

“Over the last 4 years, Andela has been a crucial ally for the African developer ecosystem, working tirelessly to help make African developers as successful as possible. We are honoured to announce our partnership with Andela and Pluralsight on the 2020 Google Africa Developer Scholarship program, which builds on our shared commitment to equip African developers with the right skills for the future,” said John Kimani, Program Manager at Google.

Engineers who have gone through the program have been able to move up in their careers and join communities where they mentor others. Boutheina Bouchahda, a middle school teacher from Tunisia and a participant in the 2019 program, was able to build an app for her students teaching them programming.

Speaking to her experience, she says, “I enjoyed all the big online events organized at the end of each step of the scholarship; they were just unbelievably inspiring and encouraging. I gained a lot more confidence and I'm currently learning more from Pluralsight. As a teacher, I'm building an app for my students to teach them how to program using Arduino because we don't have computers at school. I'm planning to apply for an Android developer job right after the school year ends.”

The Andela Learning Community furthers Andela’s commitment to cultivate and grow engineering talent on the continent.

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About Andela:
Andela is a global software engineering company. We help companies build distributed software engineering teams quickly and cost-effectively so they can ship products faster. To learn more, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn @Andela, @Andela_Ghana or visit andela.com.

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